


Thawing From The Inside

by bomberqueen17



Series: Two-Body Problem [1]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Competence Kink, First Time, Friendship, Guns, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD, Pre-Slash, Slash, Team Dynamics, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-22 22:19:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 68,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/918684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a long, slow telling of my version of Season 1, mostly from John's POV-- mostly dealing with his relationship to Rodney, but a little with Elizabeth, and his team.<br/>It's pre-slash up until it suddenly gets good in like chapter 6 or so.<br/>It is nearly complete, though there will undoubtedly be a sequel.</p><p>The chapter where the slash starts is part of the story I wrote for McShep Match 2012-- the finale-- and appears in nearly the same form in that story, but the two tales diverge... sort of. </p><p>There are no graphic descriptions of rape or non-con, but it is referred to, and sort of non-con/prostitution takes place offscreen. Gore is moderate. </p><p>This is not a fast-paced story; it's mostly an excuse to spend a lot of time in Atlantis, focus on the setting and on the stuff the TV show never really had room for, or interest in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Orange Fleece Guy

 John thought of him as the orange fleece guy, even though the second time they met, he was wearing a black shirt instead. Orange Fleece Guy was prickly, Canadian, and one of those determinedly Bad-With-People types who really wasn’t but who had taken the label as armor and went out of his way to be rude to people he wished would leave him alone, as well as people who probably meant well but made him nervous, as well as anyone else he thought might try to bug him. Which meant that eventually, he was rude to everyone, but it seemed to be some sort of litmus test; the ones who ignored it and still kept coming back to him because he was so damn useful were the ones who he let the armor down around, sometimes. 

John figured he’d insinuate his way into that category by completely refusing to rise to any bait of any kind. As they prepared for departure, he was assigned to the guy’s lab more often than not— John would’ve liked to get a little training in with some of the other military folks, just so as not to feel entirely like the weird outsider he really was, but evidently his true purpose with the expedition was acting as some sort of human lightswitch, and it was just as well he got used to that now. 

So he showed up, sat where Orange Fleece Guy indicated, and thought things _on_ with his mind on command. He got pretty good at it. The first few days were rough, as Orange Fleece Guy was so clearly jealous not to have the gene, and took it out on John. The first comment about John’s hair slid past without catching on anything, but the second, slyer, less blunt, wormed its way through John’s composure and it was a struggle not to react. The third one, and John was in the control chair and suddenly one of the light fixtures exploded in a shower of glass. 

John reflexively rolled out of the chair before he caught a faceful of glass, and peered repentantly over the arm of the chair at Orange Fleece Guy, who had shrieked and was now cowering under the table. “Shit,” John said, “did it getcha?”

“What the fuck was that?” Orange Fleece Guy demanded, shrill and breathless, slowly uncurling, eyes wide and mouth a shocked slanting line. 

“I dunno,” John said, “weren’t you the one taking readings?” 

“That spike came outta nowhere,” Orange Fleece Guy said, still tentative and wide-eyed. But his fingers were splayed out over the display, poking at the tablet, active and running and seeking answers, and John set aside his guilt and efficiently brushed glass out of the back of the orange fleece, which had reappeared today. 

John thought of saying something, but figured he’d wait to see what the instruments said, and in a moment, Orange Fleece Guy turned slowly and, with arresting ponderousness, tracked his eyes slowly up from the tablet to John’s face. John put his hands in his pockets and raised his eyebrows. “That spike came from you, Major,” he said, but it wasn’t accusing. “Your input intensity spiked. What happened? Did you feel it? Something to do with brain activity?”

“Go back,” John suggested mildly, leaning a hip against the chair arm, “and collate fluctations with the number of times you’ve insulted me, and see if maybe that’s got something to do with it.” He shrugged. 

“I didn’t insult you!” Orange Fleece Guy said, and had the audacity to look genuinely shocked. 

“The phrase ‘abomination against nature’ _did_ come out of your mouth,” John pointed out, “and there isn’t anyone else here, and since you had just addressed me by my rank, I think it’s natural for me to have assumed you were talking to me.”

“But I didn’t mean _you_ ,” Orange Fleece Guy said, “I was talking about your _hair_.”

“It’s attached to me,” John said. “I’m attached to it. It’s the only scalp I have. And I have a long and checkered history of getting shit for it.”

“It’s a hairstyle,” Orange Fleece Guy said, frowning. “If you don’t like it, change it.”

“It’s not under my control,” John said. “There’s really nothing I can do to persuade it not to do this. So it does this. Can we move on? We’ve discovered that I was a bullied child and the Ancient neural interface can react powerfully to the intensity of the user’s focus. Keep it in mind and maybe try to find operators reasonably free of neuroses for critical operations. There, I wrote your report for you.” 

“I was bullied too,” Orange Fleece Guy mumbled, and darted him another glance, a little wondering and a little… repentant, maybe. “Like, really bad. I didn’t think that happened to jock kids.”

John cleared his throat and unpinned his hip from the chair’s arm. “Well,” he said, rather than detail all the myriad ways in which he was living proof of the inaccuracy of that statement on several levels, “anyway, how about we get back to work.”

“Work,” Orange Fleece Guy said, frowning at his tablet and shooting John another glance. “Yes, it is why we’re here, isn’t it.”

 

 

“Yes,” Orange Fleece Guy was saying to Big Glasses Guy, “an emotional response in the operator.”

“Huh,” Big Glasses Guy said. Jackson. He was Jackson. Orange Fleece Guy wasn’t wearing the orange fleece. John knew he should probably start thinking of him as McKay. That was his name and it was time to start knowing people’s names. He was really doing this.

 They both noticed John at the same time, standing in the doorway with his cup of coffee. “Fascinating,” Jackson said. 

There was another scientist there who John only vaguely knew, a slightly older guy with bifocals. Bifocals stood up from behind the interface table with the giant screen on it, and said, “How controllable do you think that is?”

John stood at the foot of the chair and looked at it. “I don’t like where this is going,” he said. 

Jackson was peering owlishly at him through his giant glasses. “No, I think Losson’s on a good train of thought here. I mean,” and he shook a finger, thinking, “if the intensity of the connection can be varied by the intensity of the user’s focus, and the user’s focus varies according to his or her emotions—“

John tried again, looking at Orange Fleece Guy instead. “I really don’t like where this is going,” he said. 

“Nonono,” Jackson said, “no, I mean, why don’t we have you do a few simple tasks, and distract you, and see how that affects it?”

Finding no response from Orange Fleece, er, McKay, John swiveled his gaze back to Jackson. “I think that’s gonna depend on the type of distraction.”

“Relax,” Jackson said, finally catching on to John’s trepidation. “I was thinking, like, make you do math problems or something, not shoot at you with guns.”

“Hm,” John said, but when McKay waved him into the chair, he went only slowly. 

They started him off on cycling through the various power systems the chair was hooked into, with McKay barking numbers at him and making him guess whether they were prime or not prime. It was a long time since John had dealt in something so theoretical as prime numbers, but it came back pretty easily. But not before they got him to stumble a couple times in the power cycling. 

“This is not exactly ground-breaking,” John pointed out, sitting forward with his elbows on his knees during a break. The chair was really not very comfortable: he’d thought about asking for a cushion, or maybe something for his lower back, but that seemed unlikely to be met with much cooperation. “They do the same thing to us in pilot training. Distractions degrade your performance and slow down your reaction times and lead to increased mistakes. This has nothing to do with how you interface with the technology, whether it’s a wheel or pedals or, you know, just your brain.”

“His pilot’s training is probably significant here though,” Jackson pointed out. “I mean, he’s pretty highly trained to work through distractions.”

“Also he’s fairly good at math,” McKay said, sounding bemused by it. 

“Sometimes,” John said. He sighed at how numb his ass had gone, and leaned back. “C’mon, can we get on with this?”

“What about emotional distractions?” Jackson asked. 

“They are very effective at degrading performance,” John said, staring at the ceiling. “Refer to my personnel file for the record of when I crashed a helicopter because my copilot’s blood was obscuring the controls and was also in my eyes. It isn’t that I couldn’t fly without instruments, or my eyes for that matter, but the man had been a close friend and was screaming my name as he bled out. This is not a mystery. This isn’t something that needs to be studied. This is something the Air Force already knows about. The crash was ruled not my fault because of, you know, the hail of enemy bullets that took out my turbines shortly after fatally wounding the copilot and significantly injuring me, but the moment’s hesitation certainly didn’t help.” 

“Hey,” McKay said, “fluctuations. There you go.” He frowned at John. “Major, would you describe yourself as ‘distraught’ at the moment?”

John breathed in, then slowly out. “No,” he said. 

“Ah,” McKay said, “no, not anymore certainly. Back to normal. Power consumption is much more efficient when the user is allowed to focus and is not emotionally distraught.”

“I’m interested in the sudden violent spike from yesterday,” said the other guy, whose name John had already forgotten. Sampson. Lewis. Shit. He had no idea. “What had you said to him, McKay?”

“I insinuated that his hair was an abomination,” McKay said absently, tablet beeping as he poked at it. 

“For, like, the third time in an hour,” John clarified. 

“That level of a spike seems disproportionate to the level of annoyance a comment like that would provoke,” Other Guy said. 

“Don’t underestimate McKay,” Jackson said. “It’s not so much the content of the comment as the delivery. He’s got a rare talent for it.”

“Yeah,” John said, “just hurling random insults at me is not going to be a good—“ but Other Guy was talking over him. 

“Maybe we could try to provoke a similar reaction,” he was saying. “I mean, there’s got to be something we can learn from this.”

“I really,” John said, but McKay was snapping his fingers. 

“Anger is a kind of focus,” he said, “as is fear; it’s not sustainable, but a brief intense focus like that could give incredible power spikes. Hard to control.”

“You could log triggers,” Other Guy said, “things that gave the user a strong response, and feed them to him like commands.”

“You realize,” John put in, a little desperate to be heard, “that you’re discussing finding all my hot buttons and pushing them to get a reaction.”

“Well,” McKay said, “yes.”

“You don’t see a problem with that?” John asked patiently. 

McKay stared blankly at him. “Should I?”

“That’s already a field of study,” John said, “and it’s called torture. Have you ever been interrogated under torture, Doctor? Cuz I have, and it’s not something I’m going to willingly consent to do again.”

“No no no no,” McKay said, “we’re not going to _torture_ you, Major. That would be preposterous.”

“Actually,” Jackson put in, “he’s right, that’s pretty much what torture _is_.”

“We don’t mean like, _bad_ triggers,” Other Guy said, in that ‘eminently reasonable’ tone that had provoked John into punching people in the past. “We mean, like, Rodney making fun of his hair-level triggers. Annoying stuff, or, like, mildly irritating.”

“Yeah,” John said, “and next you’ll try waterboarding, which isn’t technically illegal, right, because it can’t really drown you, right? Yeah. You know, doesn’t that doctor have the gene?  Maybe he’ll do it.”

“You’re a combat veteran, right?” Jackson asked. John looked at him. 

“Don’t you tell _me_ to man up in the name of science,” John said, squinting dangerously at him. 

“This is fascinating,” McKay muttered. 

“I was indicating rather the opposite,” Jackson said, with that sort of sweet expression of understanding he seemed to get sometimes. “Rather that you probably don’t need your triggers prodded, as I’ve yet to meet a combat veteran who doesn’t have some level of PTSD.”

“Oh,” Other Guy said to McKay, “yes it is.”

“They’re doing it now,” John pointed out to Jackson. 

“We should have a heart monitor on him,” Other Guy said. 

“You’re right,” McKay said, fingers flying furiously over his tablet.

John knew Jackson was the most senior scientist here. He looked at him pleadingly. “This isn’t going anywhere good,” he said. “Look, they already figured out it was an inefficient use of power. I’d imagine in a crisis the user would be emotional enough to take advantage of the effect already. It’s not different from flying a plane, your reflexes are notably faster when something like mortal peril is focusing your attention.” 

“You’re probably right,” Jackson said. 

“We don’t even really need anything specific,” Other Guy said. “I mean, generic words that would get a reaction, anything like that, really. Like racial slurs or something like that, derogatory nicknames, I bet you could get a good spike from that.”

“Hmm,” McKay said.

“Guys,” Jackson said, “I think Major Sheppard’s right, here. You’re getting carried away.”

“I mean, it’d be more effective if it were things that actually applied to the subject,” Other Guy was saying to McKay. “Like, I dunno, Pencil Neck or something?”

“Hey,” John said. 

“A little spike,” Other Guy said. 

“Guys,” Jackson said. 

“You know,” McKay said, catching on to Jackson’s reluctance, “Losson, I think—“ 

“You made fun of his hair and he blew up a light,” Other Guy said. “What about his ears, or something?” 

“Guys,” Jackson said, a little louder.

In another second John was getting out of this chair and leaving the room before he decked somebody. But he’d give Jackson a second to regain control first, he wouldn’t want to undermine the man’s authority. 

“Losson,” McKay said again. 

“Or, I dunno, call him a fuckin’ faggot,” Other Guy said. 

John levitated out of the chair and grabbed Other Guy by the front of the shirt, thankfully before anything exploded. “Whoa,” McKay said. 

“I’m a person, not a machine,” John gritted into Other Guy’s wide-eyed face, “and you shut your fuckin’ mouth or I’ll shut it _for_ you.” He dumped Other Guy on his ass and stalked out, vibrating with fury.

 

 

He’d stopped vibrating but the fury wasn’t far below the surface when he saw orange fleece out of the corner of his eye in the mess hall. From his peripheral vision he watched the man’s hesitant approach. He didn’t do him the favor of looking right at him until McKay slid hesitantly into the chair opposite him at the table. 

“Hi,” McKay said, frozen-faced with nervousness. 

John regarded him, unsmiling. The silence stretched out for a moment. 

“That was way out of line, yesterday,” McKay said. “I’m, I’m really, really sorry.”

John just kept looking at him. “Yeah,” he said finally. “It was.”

“I, I know you’re a person, and I understand that, and we just, we just get so carried away. I’m really sorry. Losson didn’t mean it, at all, he just gets excited, he’s even worse than I am, and if I’d realized that’s where he was headed, I would have stopped him.” McKay was tripping over his words now, an agony of awkwardness. “I mean— I completely understand your being upset, and I wish, I wish I had the gene, I’d never make you sit in that chair again.”

“Would you let them torture you?” John asked. “If you had it? Would you sit there and let them torture you?”

“No,” McKay said. “I wouldn’t. You were completely right, as well, that it’s not something that needs much experimenting with. The readings we got were fascinating, yes— and Major, my god, that last surge, right before you got out of the chair, that required incredible control on your part and it was really something.”

McKay was getting excited again, about the science, and his hands rose and fluttered, eyes lit up, until he saw John’s unchanged expression and visibly blanched as he remembered why they were having this conversation. “Yeah,” John said. “For a nanosecond I saw how to explode the monitor in that guy’s face, and I decided not to do that.”

“You saw that?” McKay asked, wide-eyed, though whether frightened or excited was hard to tell. “Like, clearly?”

“Yeah,” John said. “But I figured, I got enough to worry about without getting court-martialed for maiming a scientist over implying I was gay.” He gave McKay a tight, squint-eyed non-smile. 

“I,” McKay said, torn between horror and fascination. “I, we, we had no idea, I mean, that you were— I mean—“

John didn’t let his expression change. “I’m not,” he said. “That’s not what this is about.” 

“I, of course.” McKay’s face went carefully blank, as if he’d just understood something. “Of course, we would never either ask or tell. It’s— of course.”

He couldn’t really help the sigh that escaped, and he rubbed his face. “Really,” he said, “I’m not, and whether I am or am not is irrelevant.” 

“Of course it is,” McKay said, then added, quietly, “but it’s all right if you are, a lot of the scientists are. We’d never breathe a word.”

Shaking his head, John closed his eyes. “McKay,” he said. “Listen. All right? I get this a lot. I look like I look. I’m used to it. It was worse when I was young. And when I was a teenager I got my face bashed in by some jock asshole who assumed, just as you are, just as Losson did. And he yelled that phrase, over and over, as he broke my ribs, as he broke my nose. Fuckin’ faggot.” He opened his eyes, and McKay had the grace to be sitting there looking horrified, no longer fascinated, and a little bit guilty. “There’s a reason there’s a special category for hate speech. It’s not just a mean thing to say. It’s a thing that gets people maimed or killed.” 

“I’m sorry,” McKay said, his voice a choked whisper. 

“And it’s a thing that could still get me court-martialed,” John went on in a moment, when he was sure his voice was his. “Don’t ask, don’t tell, but if I flip out over that word, the guys here, the military guys, that already hate me for my record, that’s enough for them to take it as an admission and start an investigation. There should be nothing for them to find, since I’m not actually gay, but I’ve seen it before, and you know what, they can always find something. Enough for a doubt. And even if they don’t get me, it’ll be enough to get me reassigned, ‘for morale’. And I’m already posted at the end of the world, there’s not really anywhere lower down the totem pole for them to put me. But I bet they can find something.”

“Nobody knows,” McKay blurted. “Nobody knows what he said.”

“Right,” John said, non-smiling tightly again. “Of course not.”

“No,” McKay said. “Really. Nobody knows. Losson’s been reassigned. I had to tell Weir, to explain why I was taking him off the project, but it’s just me and Jackson, otherwise, and Jackson’s not going to tell anybody, and I sure as hell didn’t, and Weir damn well knows better. Nobody knows what you and Losson argued about but they know whatever it was, Losson was way out of line. That’s the extent of it.”

“You already hushed it up,” John said, surprised and skeptical. This gene of his was valuable, and it was weird to keep remembering that. He had something on his side, for once. Of course, it was, again, an accident of birth, and he was fucking sick of that, but right about now he could use whatever help he could get.

“I didn’t hush it up,” McKay said, “I just hate gossip. I hadn’t even thought about it being especially sensitive. I just detest being talked about.”

“Something we have in common,” John said. He thought about it a moment, looked over at McKay, who had no tray in front of him. He’d come here to get John. “But I’m not gettin’ back in your chair.”

McKay took in a breath slowly, let it out. “We need you,” he said. 

“You were gettin’ along fine without me,” John said. 

“No,” McKay said, “we weren’t, if you remember, with the whole rogue drone thing? Beckett’s the next-strongest carrier. Next down from him is a scientist who cries whenever we ask her a question because she’s so nervous.”

“Hm,” John said. “Then I guess you have a problem.” He ate the last piece of canned fruit from his plate. 

“We need you back,” McKay said. “We can’t do it without you. I promise we won’t ever do anything like that again— I’m just so unused to having living subjects in my experiments, I really never learned about that stuff, that’s a soft sciences thing and I don’t do those.”

“I’m gonna need an order,” John said. “A direct order from somebody with the authority to give it. I’m not goin’ back in there otherwise.” He stood up, picked up his tray. “They do shit like that to you in training for Special Forces. Make you react to shit. Fuck with your head. Show you photos of lynchings and murder victims mixed in with porn and snuggly kittens and record your heart rate and eye movements while you press the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ button, for hours at a time. Shit like that. I lived through it and I made it and here I am, but I’m not doin’ it again. Find someone young and dumb like I was then.”

McKay stared at him. “They do that?”

“And worse,” John said. He walked away. 

 

 

Took about ten minutes for Weir to call him into her office, which was about what he’d expected. She wasted no time. “Major Sheppard,” she said. “McKay tells me that you need to be ordered to go back into the chair room. Why is that?”

“I’m not goin’ back there willingly,” John said. “I’ll go, of course, but I just need them to understand, I’m not there because I want to be, I’m there because I have to be. They keep forgetting I’m not part of the machinery.”

Unexpectedly, Weir said, “Major, you look exhausted.”

_Do I?_ John thought, but he looked away instead of answering. “Well,” he said, “so does everyone. We don’t have a ton of time to prepare.” He’d been spending all day in the chair and all night reading SGC mission reports. He’d hoped it’d make him feel less overwhelmed, but it was hammering home to him, more and more, that he was in way over his head here.

But it was better than slowly freezing to death from the inside out at McMurdo.

“Which is why I need you to go in there willingly,” Weir said, frowning. “I need everyone to want to be where they are.”

“I want this mission,” John said. “I said I’d go on this expedition and I don’t back out of things. I don’t mind turning stuff on and off for them. It’s exhausting to sit in that chair but I’m happy to do it if it helps them. But I won’t be experimented on. I’ve done that, Dr. Weir, I’ve been brainwashed and gassed and shocked and interrogated under torture and put through scenarios, simulated and real, like you wouldn’t believe. No more of that.”

“They treated you disrespectfully yesterday,” Weir said. “It was certainly inappropriate. It won’t happen again. I’m told of the three of them Losson was the one who crossed the line, so as per Dr. McKay’s suggestion he has been reassigned somewhere that he won’t be working with human subjects.”

“Good,” John said.

“So you’ll go back to working with them?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. 

“If you tell me to, I will,” he said.

She regarded him narrowly, a half-smile playing about her lips, twirling a pen between her fingers. “It has to be an order?”

He shrugged. “You’re the one who gives ‘em,” he said. 

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I’m more accustomed to making requests, however.”

“There’s a time for one and a time for the other,” John said. 

The pen stopped twirling and she put her hands down flat on the desk. “Then I suppose I’m ordering you to go back to work,” she said, her voice a little firmer. 

John drew himself up to attention and saluted her. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. 

“And if you have any further complaints, contact me immediately,” Dr. Weir said. 

 

 

McKay handled John with kid gloves after that, requesting instead of commanding, asking if he needed breaks and so on, studiously polite and formal and terrified that John would leave. Most of the time it was just the two of them in the room. Finally John couldn’t take it anymore. 

“McKay,” he said. “Jesus. It’s all right. I’m here. Do what you have to do.”

McKay’s eyes were wide and blue, his mouth a hard slanting line, as he stared at John. “I screwed up,” McKay said, “I really did, and I just want to fix it.”

“You’re bad with people, I thought,” John said. “Aren’t you used to this?”

“I’m used to upsetting people,” McKay said. “I’m not used to needing people.”

“You need me that bad, hm?” John tilted his head. He was absurdly tempted to forgive the guy for getting carried away and wanting to _torture_ him. 

“I do, Major,” McKay said. “And I need you to be a willing participant. I need you to want to be here. I need you to want to do this.”

“You got a need vs. want problem here,” John said. “I’ll come around, McKay. Just chill out.”

 

 

 

McKay was still a little awkward with him thenceforth, but they were at a kind of truce, and John got the feeling McKay didn’t admit to needing people very often. So he respected it and treated the guy with vaguely-warm neutrality. 

Yeah, McKay was an asshole, but then, so was John, and he found after a while that he kinda liked the guy. He was reliable. And despite freaking out constantly, he had a good head in a crisis. After the insanity of their arrival in the Pegasus Galaxy, there were a lot of people John found himself starting to rely on and even like. Weir was certainly his ally. In the aftermath of Sumner, though, he found he didn’t need an ally so much. He no longer really had adversaries. Not after the rescue was successful. 

It was a feeling he didn’t really know what to do with. Even when he’d had a good close group of buddies, with Dex still alive, and Mitch around, and Holland and all that crew, before Perez had gotten reassigned, before Johnson had gotten kicked out, before Gupta had gotten shot— he’d still had adversaries. 


	2. Doctor Bitchypants McPuddlejumpers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Pegasus. Showing John the puddlejumpers pretty much cements Rodney's status as Best Dude Ever. John's maybe getting the hang of the concept of "friend".

For the first couple of days everyone sort of camped out wherever, in sleeping bags and makeshift shelters, on couches and lounges and in piles on the floor. John didn’t sleep a whole hell of a lot, nor did most of the military. They went through a shitload of uppers, and John spent probably the first whole week on Atlantis vibrating slightly. 

But as things settled down a bit, John fell into organization, coming up with a chain of command, figuring out who had a decent head for organization and for security. Sgt. Bates had been groomed from the beginning to be head of on-base security, he had the resume for it and he had the reassuring by-the-book hard-assedness that John liked in an NCO of his stature. Plus he’d seen the inside of that hive ship. He thought John was a cocky pissant flyboy, but then, so did John, pretty much, so the guy had common sense on his side. 

They got a mess hall established, and an infirmary, and a few corridors’ worth of living quarters. Armory, ready room, rec area. John prioritized getting living areas cleared for occupation but it was slow going. Some of the Ancients’ rooms had ensuite bathrooms, and others seemed to have them in the hallways. Figuring out who got their own bathrooms was touchy. Some of the rooms were nicer and had balconies. Many of the rooms had non-obvious ATA-activated features that were downright weird, and in the end, that meant that John had to check each room— some of them opened up strange doors, some turned on machinery that was malfunctioning or required a great deal of power. 

It was exhausting, and on the fourth day John triggered something in an otherwise-promising set of living quarters that had four rooms opening onto a living room and bathroom setup. He stepped into the bathroom, checked for hidden panels, stepped out, gave the bored Marine private and distracted corporal with him a thumbs-up, then stepped into the third small room which he’d assumed was a bedroom, and suddenly he was in the infirmary blinking up at Beckett. 

“Uh,” he said, and Beckett narrowed his eyes. 

“How about now?” Beckett asked. 

“Now what?” John asked, baffled. 

“Oh, hm,” Beckett said, looking a bit startled, “Major, is that you?”

“Who else would I be?” John asked. 

“Ah,” Beckett said. “Do you know where you are, then?”

“Um,” John said, looking around, “the infirmary, I think? On Atlantis?”

“Good, good,” Beckett said, beaming. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Huh,” John said, thinking about it. “Well, it’s all a little confused, I kinda hadn’t slept in a couple days what with the excitement and the speed and all, but I think I was… I was clearing rooms for potential living quarters? Oh yeah, the nice ones on the east face of the tower. I… I don’t know why I’m here, though.”

“Well,” Beckett said, “neither of the two with you quite saw what happened, but you walked into a room, there was a bright flash, and you came staggering out speaking in tongues, or so they described it. By the time I got to you, I actually think you’d fallen asleep. But you woke up about an hour ago and you were reciting Ancient as if you were a dictionary. Have you any memory of that?”

“None whatsoever,” John said. “I don’t speak Ancient.” 

“I know you don’t, lad,” Beckett said. 

“It’d be cool if I did now, though,” John said, and thought about it. After a moment he blinked, and conceded, “okay, I don’t know how I’d know if I did.” He blinked again. “How long was I out?”

“About three hours,” Beckett said. “Which is longer than you’d slept since we hit this galaxy, so, it’s probably for the best.”

“If I find myself a bedroom, I get to sleep in it,” John said. 

“You really ought to get a bit more sleep sooner rather than later,” Beckett said. 

“I gotta play human lightswitch a little longer first,” John said, pushing himself up. “Am I good to go?”

Beckett sighed. “I’d prefer to keep you longer for observation but I don’t think I can. Aye, you’re cleared, but if you start speaking in tongues again you’d best come back.”

Two hours later John got knocked clear across the room by something that excited the engineers greatly. They designated that room, which was pretty large anyway, space for a lab. John limped off down the hall, feeling like he’d had a couple thousand volts through him and nursing a bruised elbow and hip, and cleared another four rooms before something else shocked him. That one, the engineers figured out was just a short in the electrical system. Another three rooms on, he stuck his head into a hologram and stared in baffled horror at what was either a snuff film or a porno or both. Nobody else could see it, and he could tell they thought he was crazy.

It was either kindness or fear that led the engineers to encourage John to go get something to eat. He decided not to think too hard about which it was.

He sat at the mess hall table, still shaky and bruised and finding that sometimes he just wanted to recite lists of nonsense words, and stared wearily into a cup of coffee. There were teams doing the regular sweeps of rooms, and he was just going through looking for odd ATA things, but he was beyond bone-weary and starting to long overwhelmingly for a quiet, dark room and a blanket. 

Someone slid into the chair across from him. “How long until I get someplace I can sleep?” 

It was McKay. John rubbed his face wearily, but gave him a wan half-smile. He’d gone from Orange Fleece Guy to Guy Who Discovered Puddlejumpers in John’s book, which meant he was pretty much at the top of the A-OK list regardless of how much he bitched.

 “You’re head of your department,” John said. “You can lay claim to any old space we’ve cleared. Do what you want. I don’t care.”

“Elizabeth has laid out a tentative map of where she wants personnel to locate their quarters,” McKay said. “I assume with your cooperation?”

John peered at McKay through his fingers. “I haven’t looked at any maps,” he said. “I’ve mostly been having Ancient machines try to eat me.”

“Really?” McKay looked interested. “Like _eat you_ eat you, or were you speaking metaphorically?”

“One of ‘em threw me clear across a room,” John said. “The last one was a hologram or something but let me tell you, those Ancients were _fucked up_.” 

“Oh, I heard you got zapped,” McKay said. “I was working on that short. You probably shouldn’t touch things quite so much.”

“My whole job is to touch things,” John said.

“Your whole job _was_ to touch things,” McKay pointed out. “I think you got promoted.”

“Yeah but nobody else took over my old job,” John said. “So I still have to do it.”

“There’s got to be a better way,” McKay said. “A faster way, too. I really need to find a room. Pure excitement can keep me going for a couple days but I’m just about beyond that.”

“There’s a few candidates,” John said. 

“I want one with a balcony,” McKay said. 

“Check and check,” John said. He held up a finger. “One caveat, though. The good ones with balconies have only semi-ensuite bathrooms. You’d have to share.”

“Hm,” McKay said. “That depends who I’d have to share with.”

John considered it, turning his coffee cup around in his hands. “How about me?” John liked privacy but he could share a bathroom with the guy who’d discovered puddlejumpers. 

McKay eyed him. “I’m kind of a slob, I’m told,” he said. 

“I like a clean bathroom,” John said. “And a well-stocked first-aid kit. But other than that I don’t take up much shelf space and I don’t need a ton of time in there.”

“What about hair care products?” McKay asked. “That do has got to take a while to get just right.” He made a nebulous gesture above his own head, as if he were inventing sign language to describe a demented brainsucking cephalopod.

John raised an eyebrow. “Ha,” he said. “Not really.” He shrugged. “Anyway, come help me on this last round of inspections, I bet you’ll keep me from getting killed, and in return I’ll show you the room with the balcony and see if I can’t get you first dibs.”

“I kind of have a lot to do,” McKay hedged, but John could see he was tempted. 

“C’mon,” he said, “or you’ll wind up in a room with no view and a bathroom down the hall you’ll have to share with eight Marines.”

“Oh Elizabeth wouldn’t do that to me,” McKay said. “I’m vital to the success of this mission.”

John shrugged. “Well, I’ll be dead, so it won’t matter to me,” he said with elaborate carelessness as he unfolded himself and stood up. He stretched, and looked over at McKay.

“Fine,” McKay said, pushing up from the table. “Let’s just hope the city doesn’t sink while I’m trying to keep your skinny ass out of trouble.”

 

Clearing rooms with Doctor McBitchypants Puddlejumpers was way more fun. Despite him pitching fits every ten seconds, they worked a lot faster, and he was much quicker on the draw with recommendations not to touch things. He certainly saved John at least two more electric shocks. He also helped John avoid another device that looked like some sort of simulator, and marked it for exploration later. 

“That might have some kind of entertainment function,” McKay said, peering into the circuitry of the box and indicating a thing John couldn’t identify at all. “This here, this is a hologram projector. There are several. It could be immersive. It might be like the room with the history stuff. But this is on a much smaller scale, and I don’t know what it is.”

“The last one was porn, I think,” John said, “only not anything anybody I know would ever admit to watching. I wish I could scrub my eyeballs. Nobody else could see it, they all think I’m nuts now.” 

“Porn,” Rodney said, and cocked an eyebrow.

“Or snuff. Not sure. Nightmarish.” John waved a hand. “Tits, blood, things I was trying really hard not to see, body parts. Don’t know. Bad. And I say that as a combat veteran. There’s shit I’ve seen, and shit I don’t want to see, and shit it freaks me out to even consider, and… I’m going to stop talking before I give myself a flashback.”

McKay laughed. “Note to self: Ancient porn is probably not worth it.”

“Yeah, those guys were fucked up,” John said. He laughed grimly. “Figures they’d be related to my family.”

“Harsh,” McKay said. He put the panel back over the control crystal array. “We’ll have to check this out when we have both more time and more power.”

“So, um, probably never,” John said, and the sergeant with them marked her map and shot him a resigned grin. “How much more we got to do?”

“We have just about enough living quarters for everyone,” the sergeant said, “provided some of the military personnel remain in a barracks-like situation near the jumper bay. Most of us don’t mind, sir. Then the refugees are likewise going to have to bunk several to a room, but Teyla seemed to think they’d be comfortable that way. The only thing is that we’re still short on common areas, places for people to do work and hang out without getting in the way of the control room.”

John checked his watch, which was of course on 24-hour time, no longer appropriate on a planet with a 26-hour solar cycle, and eyed the view out the window. “Ehh. Can we hand this map over to Weir and call it a night?”

“I should think so, sir,” the sergeant said. 

“Cool,” John said. He leaned in the doorway, rubbing his face, then reached out and took the map carefully. He took the pencil, turned the map, and tapped a spot on it. “I asked Dr. Weir if I could steal this one,” he said. “Smallish, has to share a bathroom, but has a balcony and looks east. I like sunrise.”

“Ooh,” McKay said. 

“Which means if you take this one, you get a northeasterly exposure, a balcony, and have to share a bathroom with me and perhaps one other person, though there was something weird in that third room so we didn’t get it cleared. But, I promise I won’t ever involve the bathroom in a prank war as long as you hang up your towels. Deal?” John looked at McKay.

“Deal,” McKay said. 

John carefully scribbled his initials on the map and handed it back to the sergeant. “Great,” he said. “Then I am going to find my sleeping bag and hide there for at least six hours. See y’all then.” 

“I’m coming with you,” McKay said. 

 

The rooms were dusty, but John knew that and had already borrowed a broom. He swept his out, then handed the broom to Rodney, and dragged his duffel in. Everyone had been issued a sleeping bag and set of sheets. They’d found a storeroom full of bed frames with ingenious webbed-spring frames, and approximate numbers had been dragged to the cleared corridors. John went and dragged one up for himself, then decided he felt kind, and went back and dragged one up for McKay. 

McKay had finished sweeping, shoving all the dust out onto the balcony just like John had, and was sitting in the exact center of the floor, absorbed in his laptop. John banged his knee on the doorframe as he tried to drag the bed in, and hopped and cursed for a moment. McKay didn’t notice. 

John rubbed ruefully at his knee, dragged the bedframe in the rest of the way, and set it up, watching to see how long it would take McKay to notice he was there. It wasn’t until he unrolled McKay’s sleeping bag and sat down on the bed with a gusty sigh that the man blinked, looked around, and noticed him. 

“Oh hey,” he said, then blinked again, surprised. “Where’d you get that bed?”

“I just dragged it in here in pieces and set it up, McKay,” John said. “You’re welcome.”

McKay frowned. “I totally would’ve heard you,” he said. 

“You didn’t,” John said. “I figured next I was gonna take a nap and see if you noticed that.”

“Huh,” McKay said, and shut the laptop, stretching. “I just took a minute to check on the power consumption now that everybody’s moving into rooms and turning lights on and things, and I found out that there are sensors to monitor ventilation and temperature all across the city. I was just trying to figure out why it’s so goddamn important to know what temperature it is in every room, and realized that some of those sensors are active even in parts of the city that have a damaged power grid. I have to look into that some more.”

“You probably ought to snag a chair to go with that desk,” John said, and sprawled luxuriously across McKay’s bed. It felt good to stretch his tired back, and he sighed, let his head flop back, and stretched. 

“Yeah,” McKay said, “I have a bad back and working like this doesn’t help it at all. You have your room all set up?”

“Nah,” John said. He wished he had his boots off. He hadn’t had his boots off in a couple days except for one really quick shower. He’d been sleeping with them on, and sleeping mostly standing up for that matter. He’d sacked out in the back of a jumper for two glorious hours at one point, radio jammed into his ear, waiting on a report that hadn’t come until he’d crawled out of the jumper and gone to hunt down the (ir)responsible party. 

McKay was still talking. John listened, enjoying the familiar noise, enjoying the feeling of being safe, at least for the moment. After a while there was quiet, and he enjoyed that too. 

Finally he blinked, realizing he’d been out for a little while, and McKay was sitting on the floor, still, his laptop screen brighter than the windows, typing away. “Bzuh,” John said, and sat up. “Shit! What time is it?”

“That really depends,” McKay said absently, hitting a couple of keys before he looked up. “Earth time or local?”

“I don’t know,” John said, scrubbing his face with his hands. “Fuck. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. Christ. That’s the first time I’ve been horizontal in a day and a half.” 

McKay laughed. “I figured I’d let you stay like that a while,” he said. “You looked so peaceful.” There was something tolerant, even perhaps fond in his expression. John filed that away to maybe think about later, or maybe not let himself think about at all, but there it was— Doctor Bitchypants McPuddlejumper was fond of him.

John checked his watch, squinted as he did the calculations. This planet had a 26-hour day, and they were still figuring out how to manage that. After sundown here meant that Earth time it was nearly 2am. John was going to need this watch modified somehow. Or they were gonna have to come up with some sort of timekeeping standard that had nothing to do with the current solar time. 

Anyway, he’d been out about an hour and a half, but he’d cleared six hours so he still had four and a half left to set up his own bed and take a shower and sleep. “Appreciate it,” he said. He yawned hugely. “I’m going to go see if I can figure out this shower, and then maybe I can set up my own bed.”

“You set me up a bed before you did yours?” McKay asked. 

John yawned again, hugely. “Well,” he said. “Yeah.” He blinked watering eyes. “Had to figure out how they worked, see. So yours was the test run. Then I figured it’d just be polite to check it out, make sure it actually held up.”

“That was thoughtful,” Rodney said. “But I think I outweigh you kind of a bit.”

John yawned yet again. “Christ,” he said, as his ears popped, and got his breathing back under control. “I dunno,” he said, “I’m heavier than I look. Just don’t toss and turn too much, you’ll probably be fine.” McKay was probably right, though, he was two hundred if he was an ounce, and John had never been able to get much above 180 at his bulkiest, which he was rather short of at the moment. He shoved unsteadily to his feet, staggered slightly, and sat back down. “Whoa.”

“Major,” McKay said, with some concern. 

John clamped his mouth shut against another eye-watering yawn. “Yup,” he said. He clambered to his feet, unbuttoned his shirt, and wandered unsteadily across the room toward the door. “Shower.”

The four doors, of their two bedrooms, the uncleared room, and the bathroom, all opened onto a little cul-de-sac formed by the outcrop of the tower. John shucked his uniform blouse and had pulled his t-shirt off before he reached the bathroom. His bedroom door was open, and the window was open, letting it air out. It was a little chilly now that the sun had gone down, but the air was much fresher here. 

McKay stood in his bedroom doorway, staring oddly at John. John tossed his shed clothes into his bedroom, where the parts of his bed were leaning against the wall, and bent to unlace his boots, propping his hip against the wall. “I’m really, really looking forward to taking these off,” he said. 

“I know the feeling,” McKay said. He was watching John, oddly transfixed. But John knew that expression, it was when your eyes were too tired to move normally. 

John wrenched off one boot, then the other, with little gasps of relief, and yanked his socks off too. He hated wearing socks but boots with no socks was a sure-fire recipe for blisters. Even these, his best boots, his favorite jump boots, fit better with socks as cushion. He was gonna have to try to get in the habit of wearing socks with his sneakers, too; without access to Earth, he couldn’t replace them when they got stinky, and socks would slow that down. But ugh, socks, ugh. 

“You should probably go sack out in that nice warm bed,” John said, noticing that Rodney was still staring at him after he’d put his boots in his room and retrieved his towel and shaving kit. “I even tested it out and pre-warmed it for ya.” He shivered a little in the cool breeze, and thought his windows closed. They obeyed smoothly, silently, and he took a moment to appreciate how awesome that was. 

“Yeah,” Rodney said. “I probably should. You’re right.”

“Seriously,” John said, “put the computer down for a couple hours.” He pushed off the wall and went into the bathroom, investigating the plumbing. There was a strange basin thing with an unmistakable seat; Ancient toilets were really recycling units that separated waste into component elements by some complicated system even Rodney hadn’t yet figured out. There was also a sink, odd in design but easy enough to puzzle out and kind of cool-looking actually, all square and angular and translucent. The showers had several nozzles and numerous control dials. Other people had some trouble figuring them out, but John had been delighted, when he’d volunteered to test out the first one they found (near the infirmary), to report that they could be easily manipulated by the ATA interface. A psychic shower: that was seriously cool. 

“Awesome,” John said to himself, and grinned at Rodney as he unbuttoned his pants and thought the bathroom door shut at the same time.

 

The shower was, indeed, awesome. John half fell asleep in its fiercely warm embrace, mesmerized by the hot slide of water across his filthy, battered, tired skin. He leaned against the wall in drowsy half-arousal, thinking the water pressure up until it pounded against the knots in his shoulders, his neck, his lower back. _That’s what all those jets are for,_ he thought muzzily, then groaned aloud as it hit just right in that knot just above his left hip. “Oh shit yeah,” he said, half-drunk with pleasure as the jets fired in turn up the line of his spine, blasting the tension out. “Holy fuck.” The water blasted into the base of his skull and he groaned, dropping his head and letting the flow sluice across his face. 

He got out with unsteady legs, wrapped himself in his towel, and stood in the steamy bathroom a moment, contemplating shaving. He decided against it; he needed sleep. So he gave his hair a cursory swipe with the towel, wrapped the towel around his hips, collected his pants and underwear, and went back to his room. 

Where McKay was just finishing assembling the bed. “Oh hey,” John said, voice cracking with tired pleasure. “You didn’t have to do that. Thanks.”

“Figured I’d return the favor,” McKay said, but he was oddly flushed, and his eyes darted away from John’s mostly-naked torso. John considered that tiredly. “Um,” McKay went on in a moment, awkwardly, “um, we should probably— I went in to pee while you were in there and I realize that was kind of an invasion of um, um privacy, so maybe—“

“Oh,” John said, “no, that’s fine. I don’t really care. I’m military, we’re used to never having a moment alone.” He shrugged. “Anyway the shower door is pretty much opaque, I’m not worried that you might see my butt or something.”

McKay’s face was so pink it might catch fire. “It’s not seeing so much as… well, you know, I like a little alone time in the shower as much as anybody.”

John blinked at him. “Oh!” He never blushed, but he felt the tips of his ears getting a little warm. “Oh, no, jeez, McKay. No. I wasn’t—“ Now that he thought of it, though, jerking off in that shower would probably be awesome. “There are these jets, and the knots in my back, it was really good. I wasn’t—“ He hesitated. “Not that there’s anything wrong with, you know, I just—“ 

“Okay,” McKay said, “anyway, um, I’m gonna go shower now, and see you in, I guess sort of the morning?”

“Yeah,” John said, then couldn’t resist adding, “so enjoy your alone time.”

McKay snorted. “As if I’m not too exhausted to even think about it.” He laughed. “I was kind of admiring your dedication. As dead beat as you had to be, and still to have the energy…”

“Yeah,” John snorted, “maybe fifteen years ago.” Ten. Heh, five, but it didn’t bear thinking about; he’d still had a wife, then, and she’d kinda been the motivating, well... He squashed the train of thought and grabbed his bedroll. “Thanks again for setting this up, that was nice. I was just thinking I was way too tired and probably just gonna sack out on the floor.”

McKay waved. “You did mine,” he said. He walked out of the room, waved, and disappeared into his own quarters. John thought his door closed, unrolled his sleeping bag, and barely remembered to drape his towel over a wall decoration so it would dry in time to let him use it to shave his face when he woke. Then he was unconscious.

 

Some sort of screeching, wailing alarm woke John and he leapt straight up out of bed, tripped over the sleeping bag, fought his way out and was halfway to the door before he remembered that he hadn’t dug his pyjamas out yet and was completely bare-assed naked. He scrambled his dirty BDU trousers onto his body, remembered about his radio, fumbled it out of the covers, and made it into the hallway, where McKay ran squarely into him and knocked him over. Christ the guy was solid. Two-fifteen, John estimated, revising as he clutched at the man’s solid shoulders; a lot more of him was muscle than it looked like. 

“Environmental sensors,” McKay huffed, then hit his radio and John got the weird double-whammy of him in real life and also amplified. “This is McKay, I’m on my way to the control room. It’s the environmental sensors, don’t panic.”

“We’re not gonna die?” John asked.

“Maybe we are,” McKay said. 

“Do I have time to put on a shirt?”

McKay looked him up and down. “If you must. But I need you and your magic gene.”

“Fuck it,” John said, “if death isn’t imminent, I’m putting on underwear and clean pants and a shirt _and_ some shoes. Sue me.”

“Just make it snappy,” McKay said. 

John laughed, ducked back into his room, and shucked his dirty trousers off. He shoved his feet back into his boots without lacing them and raced to the control room, glancing at his watch. Shit, he’d slept almost five hours, plus the hour and a half in McKay’s bed. He ran a hand through his hair, realizing he’d committed the cardinal sin of going to bed with it wet. Damn it. Well, there wasn’t a mirror anywhere in his room. He detoured into the bathroom, scrubbed wet fingers through his sideways hair, splashed his face, and made it to the control room only a couple of paces behind McKay, who wasn’t nearly so fleet-footed. 

Weir was in pyjamas, actual pyjamas— a lavender camisole and matching striped cotton pants with contrasting satin piping, for real like a catalog picture, and she had no makeup and sleep creases in one cheek. An Air Force sergeant, a technician, was poking at the console gingerly. 

“It’s the environmental sensors,” McKay said again, and muscled into the technician’s space, shouldering him out of the way. _Yeah_ , John thought, still a little sleep-fogged, he had solid shoulders; no amount of working out on John’s part would ever give him a big solid set like that. _Nice._ His long fingers flew over the laptop keyboard, then he hit a couple of the crystals, and the noise blessedly shut off. “They need recalibration but I haven’t finished deciphering what they’re actually saying. I don’t have my laptop networked properly yet.” 

John slouched against the back of the console, giving Elizabeth a tired eyebrow raise and grin. “Hell of an alarm clock,” he said. 

“Yes,” she agreed, arms folded tight across her midsection, her body language all miserable discomfort and tired fear. Oh hell, she wasn’t wearing a bra under that camisole, and that was really the last thing John needed to have ever noticed. He peeled his eyes up from her torso and made eye contact instead. 

“Hey,” he said, “at least I got a couple hours. And a hot shower. The showers here are _awesome_.”

“I couldn’t figure out all the knobs and dials,” Elizabeth admitted. 

“I’ll have to see if I can’t figure ‘em out,” John said. “I can control them with the ATA thing but I assume the knobs and dials are for non-ATA users. There are like twenty jets in there. I didn’t want to get out but I gotta share with McKay, so I figured it’d be rude to, like, sleep in there.”

“I figured out how to make the water hot,” Elizabeth said, “but that was as far as I could get.”

“A good start,” John conceded. He yawned hugely. “Let’s go get the geeks coffee, Dr. Weir. Unless you want to go back to bed.” 

“No, I’m up for the duration,” she said. “But I think I might want to put real clothes on first.”

“Overrated,” John said. He scrubbed at his hair. “Though I had the advantage of McKay being able to tell me that I had time to put a shirt on.” He nodded at Elizabeth. “Those are classy pyjamas. I should get some.”

“You don’t have monogrammed satin ones?” she asked, recovering enough to do her demure version of flirting. 

“Oh I should get some of those,” he said. “No, I sleep in raggedy old track pants and stupid Air Force workout shirts. Though I couldn’t find them last night. If it had been a real emergency I would’ve been up here bare-ass naked. That’ll teach me. This is the Pegasus galaxy: always wear pyjamas.”

Elizabeth muffled a giggle that had a suspiciously snort-like quality to it. “Monogrammed satin ones,” she finished for him, recovered to solemnity. 

“Seriously,” he said. She had bare feet, and pattered down the hallway with him to the mess hall, despite her earlier reluctance. She was still clutching her arms. “Oh, hey,” he said, “are you cold?” He knew that body language, it wasn’t cold. She was self-conscious because she didn’t have a bra on, even though it wasn’t like she had a whole lot up there to flop around. Still and all, he understood that kind of feeling exposed.

“A little,” she said. He handed her the uniform shirt he’d flung on overtop of his t-shirt, and she wrapped it around herself gratefully. 

“All right,” she said, “let’s get that coffee.”


	3. Intro to Anaphylaxis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John learns about Epi-Pens; Rodney learns a little about what Team means to John.

 

McKay was obsessive about a lot of things, John had caught on. He had half-expected the man wouldn’t consent to being on a gate team, but, well, he’d stepped through a Stargate, and knew an awful lot about them, so it wasn’t a huge shock when he proved himself willing, after all, to go offworld regularly. One of the things McKay was obsessive about was his Epi-Pen. John let it slide along with the other things Rodney freaked out about, but after enduring several freakouts about it, he decided he should probably consider this one a little more deeply than the rest of Rodney’s hypochondria. 

And so he sought out Beckett quietly, after hours. Beckett and McKay seemed pretty tight; not bosom buddies exactly, but more than casual acquaintances. John wasn’t great at not offending people, but he bothered to try to think of a way to bring it up that wouldn’t be all blunt assholery.

He didn’t come up with one, so he just leaned on Beckett’s desk until the man finally unwound a bit, and said, “So, McKay, he’s a total hypochondriac, right?”

“Mostly,” Beckett said. “His hypoglycemia? Entirely self-diagnosed.”

“I figured,” John said. He picked up a pen and twirled it between his fingers. “But the allergies. Those can be serious shit. Is he for real?”

“The pollen allergy is mild,” Beckett said. “The hayfever is possibly entirely psychosomatic. I’m not sure he’s ever actually been stung by a bee. But the citrus? That one’s genuine.”

John nodded. “All right,” he said. “Then I’m gonna have to bug you to get me some training. Because offworld, there’s a lot of shit that’s not well-labeled, and I really, really don’t want to lose my chief scientist because I was a jackass and told him to man up and drink the Cup of Friendship the weird aliens were handing around and it turns out the thing’s all lemon juice.”

Beckett looked up at him seriously, then grinned. “I think I like you, Major,” he said. 

 

 

 

John didn’t say anything about it to the others, but he’d started carrying Epi-Pens in his tac vest. Until Ford was an asshole to Rodney about his fake allergies, and sparked a furious temper tantrum, and was highly amused in the aftermath, and didn’t notice that John hadn’t laughed once the whole time. Teyla never laughed when someone was being mocked; if it was warranted mocking, she had an eyebrow thing she did, but never laughter. John didn’t say anything, though he calmed Rodney down afterward by asking him distracting questions, but as soon as they were back on Atlantis he pulled both Ford and Teyla aside. 

“Listen up,” he said, sitting them both down in the second floor common area. He’d stripped out of his mission gear along with them, as Rodney had disappeared back to the lab, but he still had the epinephrine doser with him, and the dummy one Carson had trained him with. He pulled both out of the thigh pocket on his pants, and held them up. “This is an Epi-Pen. You’re learning how to use it because guess what? McKay is full of shit about a lot of things, and his hypoglycemia totally isn’t really even a thing, but the allergies? Real. Okay? I checked with Carson. Honest to God, if someone slips him a lemon, he could fucking die within five minutes. Or if a bee stings him. And we have enough to worry about, _Ford_ , without that.”

Ford had the decency to look abashed. “He’s really allergic?” he asked. 

John nodded. “Beckett had to intubate him,” he said. “Not that long before Atlantis. Because somebody else thought it was fake, and thought it was funny. McKay is really, truly, life-threateningly allergic to citrus.” 

“I have never seen an allergy that could kill someone,” Teyla said, and her face was smooth with concern. “I had not understood it was possible for it to be as severe as he kept saying.”

“I know he exaggerates about literally everything,” John said, “but not this. So I had Beckett teach me, and now I’m teaching you. And I know how fun it is to needle McKay. Christ, I do it all the time. But not about this, okay Ford?” 

“Okay,” Ford said, solemn and genuinely horrified, and he listened to the explanation of all the warning signs and symptoms, and watched attentively as John explained the use, first with the dummy then with the real pen. Each of them took a real Epi-Pen and added it to their gear.

“Also,” John said, “Beckett suspects we might be exposed to allergens that might do this unexpectedly to any of us, out here in this alien galaxy, so everyone’s gonna get the standard training. I just wanted us to have a heads-up.”

 

 

 

John had his feet propped on his desk, and an ice pack wrapped around his left ankle as he poked at a tablet held up by his chest. He was never, ever, ever going to get the hang of this paperwork. He’d never been high up enough in the chain of command anywhere to have a tremendous amount of paperwork to do, and he wasn’t much good at it. Mostly it was just that it was hard for him to focus on it for any amount of time, but he also just plain wasn’t used to it. Endless reports he had to read and sign off on, endless notes he had to collate, endless decisions he had to approve. And it didn’t help that he had to intersperse all that with a generous helping of getting his ass handed to him by various people, be they aliens or Marines or whatever. Currently it was a mildly sprained ankle he hadn’t yet had Beckett look at, courtesy of a loose rock on MG6-442.

A shadow fell across the door and he raised his eyes, expecting either Ford or McKay, but it was Weir. “Hey,” he said. 

“What did you do to yourself now?” Weir asked, leaning in the doorway and crossing her arms over her chest. John gave her a quizzical look, but it was pretty obvious she was talking about his ankle, since he only had one boot on and the ice pack was wrapped in a bright blue towel.

“I know it’s not a bad sprain because I didn’t see stars,” he said, “so I’m not much worried. I tripped, Doc. It happens.” 

“I thought you were the epitome of grace,” she said. 

“You’re thinkin’ of Teyla,” John said. 

“Ah,” Weir said, “I get the two of you confused.”

John nodded sagely. “Wait’ll my tan comes back, then it’ll be impossible to tell us apart.”

Weir smiled, in that way she so infrequently did. Making her make that face was like winning a prize, John thought. His watch beeped and he sat up to pull the ice pack off, and set the tablet on the desk to rub his face. Weir glanced at her watch, and frowned.

“I set a timer,” John said. “For the ice. Twenty minutes on, ten minutes off. Mostly it’s to keep me working on the paperwork. I don’t get to set the tablet down and do anything else until the timer goes off.”

“You seem an old hand at the paperwork thing,” Weir said. 

John snorted. “No,” he said. “At the ice thing, yes. I’ve a great deal of experience at physical therapy. Paperwork, not so much. I’ve never been XO, never been CO. Always just a pilot. In charge of a crew, yeah. In charge of a larger group than that, no.” 

“Hm,” Weir said. She came into the office and sat down in the other chair, hands folded and set on her knees. “Well,” she said, “you’ve adjusted pretty well, then.”

John shrugged. “I have the training for it,” he said, “and I’ve been around long enough to have pretty much seen it all. I know how it goes, I’ve just never had to be the one pushing the pencils. I’m real light on that end of the experience.” He rubbed his face, then the back of his neck. “We didn’t really bring all that much support staff. I’d give kind of a lot for a few more really good administrative NCOs.” 

Weir looked thoughtful. “You’re right,” she said. “On the civilian side, too. We brought a lot of scientists, a lot of brilliant people, but not enough support staff, not enough managers and organizers and the like. Those sorts of people are really easy to overlook but really difficult to live without.”

John nodded. “I mean,” he said, “I guess we don’t need to worry about the payroll and insurance and such. That’s all still being handled, at least theoretically, by SGC, we just have no contact with them or access to any of it.” 

Weir nodded. “We’ll do fine,” she said. 

“Yeah,” John said. He was a little bit headachey, which was dire given how much ibuprofen he’d already taken for the ankle. He wasn’t as far in the paperwork as he’d hoped but he was probably going to have to knock off soon. 

“Hey,” Weir said. “I was just noticing today, you and Dr. McKay seem to have hit it off really well.”

John considered that. “Yeah,” he said, “McKay’s prickly but really he’s a good guy.”

“I’m glad,” Weir said. “I had worried you guys got off to a kind of… rough start.”

John shrugged. “That wasn’t us, though, so much as it was the whole human lightswitch problem,” he said. “Plus I admit I was a little worried about the science vs. military divide. I’ve had that before, where the military guys are basically just considered meat puppets by the civilians in any particular operation. I’ve spent plenty of time being treated like I’m just part of the thing I’m flying, no actual recognition that hey, I’m a person too, having a rank doesn’t take that away.”

“Really,” Weir said. 

John nodded. “So maybe I was more prickly than I strictly had to be,” he said. “But I was making a point. That wasn’t to piss McKay off, or put him in his place, it was to make a broader point. Plus I honestly almost killed Losson and I needed a minute to get over it.”

“What he said was _so_ far out of line,” Weir said. 

“Did McKay mention why I objected so strongly to that phrase in particular?” John asked mildly.

“No,” Weir said, but an expression crossed her face, and he saw her gaze flicker to the door— seeing if anyone would overhear them. She assumed too.

“I’m not gay, Dr. Weir,” John said. “That’s not what it is. But people think I am. I guess the way I act, or the way I look— I’m not really sure. It doesn’t bother me, mostly. I’m not much in the market either way so I don’t bother setting people straight. I really don’t care. But when I was much younger, not much more than a kid, some giant good ol’ boy decided I was a, in his exact words, fuckin’ faggot, and proceeded to beat the shit outta me, and ever since then, it’s real hard for me to hear that phrase, or others like it, and not get pretty upset. It’s hate speech, Doc. I got my face kicked in just on suspicion. Broke my nose. Cracked my jaw. Broke some ribs. I was seventeen. I weighed a hundred and thirty pounds. Just because of words and what they mean. I’m not a sticks and stones words don’t hurt kinda guy because that’s bullshit.”

Weir was staring at him, and he didn’t meet her eyes, but kept considering his own fingers.

“I don’t put up with that word, or others like it. People figure I’m gay or way too PC or spent too much time in California or whatever, but I really, really get my panties in a wad over that kinda shit. I don’t wanna hear any of it.” He finally raised his eyes to her. “I don’t mind a lot of shit. I try to stay easy-going. I don’t really get too wound up over shit. But there’s a handful of words, I’ll throw you right out of my helicopter if you say ‘em, and I’ve told people before, I’ll only land the first time. After that, I’m just throwin’ you out and to hell with you, I don’t give a fuck where you land.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” Weir said. She nodded to herself, then said, “Which reminds me, I’d meant to ask you about your stance on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

John squinted at her. “That policy was created to protect gay soldiers from harassment,” he said. “Before that, bigots could witch-hunt people out. Now they’re not allowed to do that. They can still do a lot of damage. It’s a stupid policy. Because I should know about relationships. I should be able to make changes in assignments to avoid fraternization. I should be able to make sure you know first if something happens to your lover, make sure you’re not the one there pushing the button that’ll kill him and save twenty other people. I should be informed about that kind of shit. But if I’m on record as knowing about it, now it’s _my_ ass on the line. So my official stance is don’t go on record as having told me _shit_ because I don’t need to give anybody any _more_ reason to throw me out, but for God’s sake, keep me in the loop.”

“Good,” Weir said, sounding relieved. “Very good. Because of course my policy is to recognize same-sex relationships the same way as I would heterosexual ones, and I wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable conflict between the civilian and military populations if you were strict about it. I’d had this discussion with Sumner, you know.”

“Yeah? What’d he say?” John really hadn’t ever thought about that, but of course Weir and Sumner had probably had a lot of meetings before the expedition departed, and she’d made a lot of plans assuming Sumner would be there. 

Weir smiled. “About the same thing you did,” she said, “although a little less sympathetic. He said he didn’t care who stuck it where as long as they didn’t force him to take an official stance on it.” 

“Nice,” John said. Pretty standard, actually. He had a moment to wonder, as he had before, whether maybe Sumner would’ve warmed up to him in the end anyway. The guy had kind of been a dick, but also had probably been a good officer or he wouldn’t have been here. His people had certainly cared for him. 

His watch beeped and he sighed and retrieved the ice pack and the tablet, leaning back and propping his foot up again. Something struck him, and he looked over at Weir, who was lost in inward contemplation of something— probably thinking about Sumner, too. “You came in here to ask if McKay and I were hookin’ up, didn’t you,” he said. 

She looked up with a start of unmistakable guilt. “No!” she said. “No, no no.” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she laughed, and said, “I wasn’t going to ask, I’m better at sussing these things out than that.”

John had to laugh at that. “You know, it’s not that McKay’s not a fine figure of a man in his own right,” he said, “but I just, you know…” He gestured vaguely, shook his head with another laugh.

Weir laughed. “He is a fine figure of a man,” she said, obviously as amused by the phrase as John had intended. 

“But seriously,” John said, “he really is a good guy. And once you get past the armor, once you’re on his list of people he gives a shit about, he’s fiercely loyal. I really value that. I’m the same way. If I don’t give a damn about you I don’t give a damn, but if I do, well, then, I’ll die for you, and that’s that.” 

 

*

 

It was the stupidest goddamn thing. John was talking nicely to the village headman, Ford was across the room watching the exit in his affably serious way, and Teyla was murmuring quietly in the corner to someone she knew, and Rodney was eating, of course, and John wasn’t even paying any attention to the team but for some reason when the cup clattered to the floor he knew immediately what was wrong. 

He spun around even though nobody else in the room had quieted yet, and he saw immediately the panic in Rodney’s eyes, saw the unnatural flush creeping across Rodney’s face, saw the way he staggered unsteadily, and he was in motion before he even consciously knew what he was going to do.

“McKay,” he said, grabbing Rodney by the shoulders, easing him down, ignoring the alarm of the woman who’d been speaking to him, ignoring the headman’s anxious queries. 

“John,” Rodney said, and he’d never used his given name before, always called him by his rank or last name, but when he breathed there was a terrifying tight wheeze to it, and he was arching his back as if that would help him, his eyes already staring blankly. 

“Fuck,” John said, and pawed frantically through his tac vest. Left upper pocket. No, that was a wound dressing. Next one over. 

Rodney’s mouth was moving, he was trying to talk, of course he was, and his hands flapped, but nowhere near his vest. “Citrus,” Rodney managed to wheeze, his tongue swollen so it sounded more like “hitwiff”.

“I know,” John snapped, “I know, I got it, just breathe, don’t talk!” He found his pen, it was in the third pocket on the left, and he snapped the cap off between his teeth and rubbed at Rodney’s thigh, finding a spot where there was only one layer of fabric and nothing underneath, finding the thickest part of the muscle. He jabbed down, just as he’d been taught, and Rodney squeaked and arched his body, and John held it there ten seconds, then rubbed fiercely at the injection site when he pulled the pen away. “It’s all right, McKay,” he said. “It’s all right. You gotta breathe, buddy. You gotta breathe.”

“You need another one?” Ford asked anxiously at his elbow, and John tore his gaze away from Rodney’s desperate face for a second. Ford was holding another Epi-Pen. John took it.

“I hope not,” he said. “Radio for a jumper, he’s gotta get back to the infirmary ASAP. Teyla.” He looked, and Teyla was kneeling across from him. “Teyla, please explain what just happened to these people, I bet they’ve never seen this before. It’s okay. It’s just his allergy. There must’ve been lemon juice or something chemically similar enough to trigger his reaction.”

She nodded. “Don’t worry, John,” she said. “I’ll make sure everyone understands.”

“Go, Ford,” John said. “Go outside. Meet the jumper. I’m staying with McKay.”

McKay was still wheezing, still looking up at him, eyes panicked blue pinpricks in his swollen purple face, and John put his hand down and felt for the pulse point in McKay’s neck. “Hey,” he said. “Hey, Rodney. Can you breathe?”

Rodney’s breath whistled, and John remembered to elevate his head, pulled it into his lap and bit his lip at how thready the man’s pulse was, how rapid. McKay seemed conscious, but he wasn’t speaking yet. “Stay with me,” John said, watching the deep flush start to fade. “Stay with me here. Just breathe. Help’s comin’.”

Rodney’s eyes had slid closed but he was breathing, a little deeper, the whistle less pronounced, and he was conscious, just squeezing his eyes shut against the light, like Carson had warned he might. John took one of Rodney’s cold hands between his, put his fingers against the pulse point, and held his wrist, keeping the other hand on Rodney’s face. “Stay with me,” he murmured. “It’s cool, McKay. It’s cool.” He could hear Teyla speaking, could hear chatter on the radio. “Ford called for help, we’ll have you back to the infirmary in no time.”

“Help me sit up,” Rodney wheezed after a long moment.

“You sure?” John asked, frowning. He wasn’t sure of much beyond the immediate treatment, he just remembered he had to keep him warm and calm, like any injured person. 

“Yeah,” Rodney said, squinting. The swelling in his face had gone down a little; he still looked bruised and blotchy, but he wasn’t quite so disfigured. John helped him sit up, supporting him against his own chest, holding him steady, and Rodney fumbled until he managed to produce a bottle of water, nearly empty. He couldn’t get the cap off, so John did it for him. He took a sip carefully and held it in his mouth, then swallowed with great concentration.

His breathing was still a tight wheeze, and his body trembled. “That was pretty intense, buddy,” John admitted. “I never saw anybody do that before.”

“You knew what to do,” Rodney whispered, a little wondering. 

“Yeah,” John said, not really knowing what else to say. In a few minutes he carefully, slowly, got Rodney to his feet and helped him hobble, slowly, to the door, Teyla taking his other arm, still smiling and speaking to their hosts. John spared a little attention to smile politely at them and reassure them they’d be back, they knew it wasn’t poison, and so on. Rodney leaned heavily on John and wheezed tightly for breath, and the jumper was in the village square by the time they got there. 

 

 

“What if we can’t get him to you right away?” John asked, and Beckett startled a little, looked up from his tablet at John leaning in the doorway, and made much of clutching at his chest. “Sorry,” John offered belatedly. He hadn’t thought he’d been particularly stealthy; he’d been leaning there almost ten minutes though, waiting for Beckett to not look like he was right in the middle of something crucial.

“He really needs to be brought in as soon as you can manage,” Beckett said. “The epinephrine can arrest the initial reaction if it’s administered as immediately as possible— though, for the record, after about twenty minutes without treatment there may be no way of stopping the reaction, so even if he’s in a hospital by then, there could well be no way to save him— but there are secondary reactions of a variety of types and there just isn’t any field-ready type of treatment.”

John rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing. “Was afraid you’d say that.” 

“Aye,” Beckett said grimly. He stood up, stretching his shoulders. “Well,” he said, “perhaps it makes a bit more sense now why Rodney’s such a hypochondriac.”

“That was the most terrifying fuckin’ thing I’ve ever seen,” John admitted, surprising himself. 

“Never seen it before, have you?” Beckett asked. 

John shook his head. “Not like that,” he said. “It was— it was instant. I was listening to him rant about something with half my brain, and then suddenly he dropped his cup and I knew right away that was what it was. Holy shit, Doc.” 

“Aye,” Beckett said. 

“He’s all right now, though, right?” John resumed his doorway lean. 

“Oh, aye,” Beckett said. He bent back to his tablet and poked something. “I’ll email you some documentation on treatment protocols, at least give you a better grounding in the condition so that if you aren’t able to get him to medical help promptly, you at least have some idea of what’s going on with him. There’s just no way for you to have all the necessary materials in a field medical kit to treat him in the case of a secondary reaction. There are just too many things that would go wrong. But the more you know, perhaps…”

“Is it too dangerous for him to go offworld?” John asked. 

“No,” Beckett said decisively. “I know it doesn’t seem like it at the moment, but he’s only had three of these reactions now in his entire adult life, and two were as results of deliberate sabotage. This is honestly the first time in his adult life he’s simply made a mistake and consumed something that wasn’t safe.”

John blinked at that. “Wait, people poisoned him on _purpose_?” 

Beckett gave John a slow sad look. “Aye,” he said finally. “To be fair, though, I don’t think in either case the perpetrator really understood what the result would be. Not many people have actually witnessed an anaphylactic reaction.”

“If anyone poisons him deliberately they’ll have me to answer to,” John said quietly, “and if I have to watch McKay do _that_ again, you bet your ass I’m not going through official channels in my response. That was fuckin’ awful.”

Beckett, surprisingly, smiled, though it was a small, grim smile.  “Should your response bring them here, I’ll be sure not to say anything incriminating in my report.”

“Shit,” John said, unsmiling, “Special Forces didn’t train no fool. You’ll never find the bodies, Beckett.” He grinned, utterly humorlessly, and pushed off the door. “Can I talk to McKay, or is he down for the count?”

Beckett was regarding him thoughtfully. “He’s just down the hall,” he said. “See if he’s awake. If he’s not, you’re not going to have much luck rousing him, but if he is, feel free. Just try not to excite him too much.”

John nodded, and swung out the door. 

 

Rodney was leaning up in bed, still a little puffy-faced, frowning tiredly at a tablet. John dropped into the chair by the bed, as boneless and unconcerned as he could manage. “Major,” Rodney said absently, frowning, and only after a moment did he flick his eyes up to look at John.

“Doctor,” John answered, aiming at light instead of mocking. “I’m sure you’ll be delighted to know that Teyla has already accompanied Lorne’s team back to P2X-497 and the natives are falling all over themselves to make up for accidentally poisoning you.”

“They should,” Rodney said, going back to his tablet, with just a hint of righteous preening. “I almost died.”

“You did,” John said, “but of course, it was an accident.” He twined his fingers together, across his chest, and added, as casually as he could manage, “I made sure it was. There’s no way they could’ve known about your allergy, no chance someone who did know could’ve tipped ‘em off, and moreover, no motive; they’ve nothing to gain from killing you, only to lose, and no connections to anybody who would have something to gain. But just to lay your mind at ease, I _did_ check.”

Rodney gave him a blank look, which slowly melted into something else as he looked away. “You _checked_ ,” he said. 

“It matters,” John said. 

“And you knew how to use the Epi-Pen,” Rodney said. “How did you know that?”

“I asked Beckett,” John admitted. It felt weird, like Rodney was going to make a fuss, and John fidgeted uncomfortably but he didn’t see any way of getting out of the converstaion. 

“Oh,” Rodney said. “What, on the radio?”

“No,” John said, “I didn’t have time then. I asked before.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. 

“You’re on my team, McKay,” John said, pushing himself to his feet before Rodney got any weirder. It was kind of upsetting to think that nobody had ever had the faith in him to bother with this before. But then, John knew what it was like to have nobody have your back. He didn’t suppose it was so odd for Rodney to get weird about this. But that didn’t change that he was getting weird and it was time to go. “These things matter. I lose people to enough stupid shit without even getting into the stuff I can forsee and prevent.”

“Yeah,” Rodney said, shooting him a crooked smile. 

That was John’s cue to leave, so he did.

 

 

It wasn’t until halfway through the next mission, following a diffuse trail of energy readings deep into a really annoying jungle, that McKay got weird again. John was taking a breather after having hacked a trail through a Vietnam-movie-like jungle with a machete (he’d already discovered that Ford had no more idea about his Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now references than Teyla did, and Rodney was too distracted to laugh) , leaning against a tree trunk and wondering how much Gatorade a human could drink without kidney failure (and if that shit actually tastes good, you need it) when Rodney sidled up to him.

“Pick that reading back up?” John asked, wiping his face on his shirt sleeve and wondering if the bugs would simply eat him alive if he took his t-shirt off for a minute. Bug repellant was almost useless, it sweated off so fast. 

“No,” McKay said, and he was staring at John intensely. John blinked, checked behind himself for ghosts, and looked back. 

“What?” 

“I still have two Epi-Pens in my tac vest,” Rodney said. 

“Good,” John said, and clapped his arm casually. “Stay prepared.”

“I didn’t replace them,” Rodney said. 

John blinked. “Are they expired?” he asked. “You gotta keep up with that.”

“No,” Rodney said. “They’re the same two I had when we left for P2X-497.”

John nodded, trying to make the connection. “Oh,” he said, realizing where Rodney was confused. “That’s cuz I used mine on ya.”

Rodney was still staring at him. “Why do you have one?” he asked.

John patted his tac vest, found the pocket, pulled out the two he carried. “I carry two of ‘em,” he said. “We all do.”

“Why?” Rodney demanded, more upset.

Shit, he was gonna be weird about this. “Well, they came in handy, didn’t they?” he said. 

“You already were carrying them then,” Rodney said. “You’d never even seen…” 

“I asked Beckett,” John admitted. “He said you were for real about it, so I got him to issue me a few of the pens, and had him train me, and Teyla, and Ford, and now we all know. And it’s a damn good thing I did because I didn’t fancy trying to ask you any questions about it in the state you were in.”

“No,” Rodney said, “I wouldn’t have been able to tell you anything.”

John nodded. “Then good,” he said, and beamed. He was still out of breath but he wasn’t going to stand here and chat any longer. Rodney was still staring at him. So he clouted him on the arm again and said, “You’re on my _team_ , Rodney.”

Rodney grabbed his forearm. “Beckett said you’d told him you’d kill anyone who sabotaged me again,” he said, all in a rush.

John considered that. Rodney was staring at him and suddenly John could see the kid the jocks probably stuffed into lockers, who hadn’t ever learned the armor of pretending not to care like John had. Hadn’t been much, by way of protection, but it had helped, had deflected some of the unwelcome attention… onto kids like Rodney who hadn’t even had that scant protective coating. Shit. His instinct was to play the asshole, say something mean so those giant nerdy blue eyes stopped staring at him all weird and needy, but he didn’t have it in him. 

“Shit,” John said, “I didn’t make any threats. I just, you know, I got a pretty fierce protection instinct and I don’t like to just shift problems around. If I take care of a problem it stays taken care of, right? And if I have to stab you with another of these fuckin’ things,” and he waved the Epi-Pen, “because some jackass thought it was funny, well, I just told Beckett he wasn’t going to have to worry about such a person showing up at his infirmary. I wouldn’t leave a mess for him to clean up.”

 


	4. Invulnerable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I realized I'd sequentially missed Hide and Seek, so I had to slot this short chapter in before some of the later ones!

 

John swiped his hand to open the bathroom door, and stepped in as it whooshed open, can of powdered cleanser in one hand and scrub brush in the other. They didn’t really have cleaning staff with them here, and while McKay wasn’t as sloppy as some roommates John had had, the bathroom was getting a little grungy. John liked a spotless bathroom, preferably hospital-clean, because he got hurt often enough that courting infection from poor sanitation was always a concern. 

McKay gave a yelp and flailed his towel into place: he must’ve just been coming out of the shower. “Oh shit,” John said, “sorry.”

“No no,” McKay said, flushed bright red, “it’s fine,” and John blinked in surprise at the freckles on Rodney’s shoulders, how translucent his skin was, flushed from hot water and embarrassment. The bathroom was a little steamy and smelled of soap. Rodney was wearing only a towel around his waist, and John had noticed before how broad his shoulders were, but somehow it affected him more just now, seeing the man naked and vulnerable in such an intimate state.

“Figured I’d clean the bathroom,” John said self-consciously, wondering what the hell was wrong with him that he was— was he checking McKay out? Jesus. “Gettin’ a little grungy.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, “yes, I suppose. Um, should we, um, make a schedule or something?”

“Nah,” John said, “I don’t mind doing it.”

“I’m, ah, I’m trying to keep the mess largely confined to my quarters,” Rodney said. “I know I’m not the tidiest person, but I am trying.”

“I appreciate that,” John said, smiling at him. Now it was impossible to tell if McKay was still blushing from embarrassment, or from the hot water of the shower, or what.

“When, um, when you’re done with that,” Rodney said, “I have something cool you should probably check out.” He pointed back toward his quarters. “I figure you might appreciate it.”

“Sure,” John said, intrigued. Rodney went out the door and disappeared into his room, and John caught himself watching the shape of Rodney’s ass through the towel. What the hell was that about? 

Must just be the unexpected intimacy of finding him like that, fresh out of the shower. Shaking his head at himself, John dumped the scouring powder into the sink and started scrubbing. It’d been a damn long time since he’d been with anybody, and with all the stresses he was subjected to here, he hadn’t been devoting much time to taking care of business, as it were, on his own. Maybe he oughta be doing a little more of that. It wouldn’t do to, well— it wouldn’t do, and he pushed it out of his mind, whatever he’d been thinking about thinking. He certainly hadn’t been thinking about Rodney’s ass.

He made quick work of the bathroom and put the cleaning supplies back in the hallway before carefully knocking on McKay’s door. The door whooshed open almost immediately, as though McKay had been waiting for him. 

“Check this out,” McKay said, beckoning him into the room. John followed, noting that it wasn’t actually as cluttered in here as all that. Rodney stood in the middle of the room and said, “Shoot me.”

John blinked at him. “With what?”

“With your gun,” Rodney said. 

John figured any second now it would click and he’d figure out what Rodney was on about; talking with McKay was usually like that. But he waited patiently, and it didn’t. “Shoot you with my gun,” he said. “What, like, in the chest? Are you suicidal?”

“No!” Rodney said. “I got the gene therapy and I have this really cool device. It’s a personal shield, Sheppard. If you shoot me, it’ll just bounce off.” 

John blinked at him. “Have you tested this with anything else?” he asked, eyebrow raised. 

“No,” Rodney said, “well, I banged my shin on the bed, and it didn’t hurt, and it dented the bed, so, I figured it’d be mean to ask you to hit me with your hand.” 

“Well,” John said, still dubious. He knew about the gene therapy; Carson had taken what seemed like gallons of his blood to analyze his gene, which was more strongly-expressed than Carson’s. And he knew the human trials were due to start soon, he just hadn’t realized they were at a point where McKay would get it. “Kick the bed and let me see.”

Rodney gleefully let fly, booting the bed as hard as he could, and John noticed the strange green shimmer moving across from the point of impact, hugging close to his body. “Huh,” he said. “Interesting.”

“Yeah,” Rodney said. “So shoot me.”

“I dunno,” John said. “A bullet goes a lot faster than a bed.”

“Like, in the leg or something,” Rodney said. “C’mon!”

Rodney wasn’t the physically reckless type, John already knew. He was kind of a chicken, really. He wouldn’t be asking for this if he thought there was a risk. And he was the smartest guy here, so, it was likely he knew what he was talking about. 

“Fine,” John said, and drew his sidearm. “You want me to do this in here?”

“Hm,” Rodney said, looking around the little room, looking at the two computers and a tablet. “Let’s go out on the balcony.”

“You think it’ll ricochet?” John asked. 

“Probably,” Rodney said. 

“Great,” John said. “Last thing I need is to get hit with a ricochet.” But he followed Rodney out the door, and calculated trajectory in his head really quickly. “Ok, you stand there, and I’ll stand here. Ready?”

“Y— yes,” Rodney said, squaring his shoulders. John thumbed the safety off, sighted casually, and squeezed the trigger. The shield flared bright green and the bullet whizzed off toward the horizon with an audible whine. “Whoa!”

“Yikes,” John said. “Did that hurt?”

“Didn’t feel a thing,” Rodney crowed. John looked out where the bullet had ricocheted, but he’d calculated right and it hadn’t hit anything on its way. “I’m invulnerable!”

“That’s amazing,” John said. “Can I get one?”

“Ha ha,” Rodney said, “throw me off the balcony!”

John looked incredulously down at the long, long drop. “No fuckin’ way,” he said. 

“I bet it won’t hurt at all!” Rodney said. 

“Yeah but we’d never find you,” John said. “Not unless it makes you fly.”

Rodney deflated a little. “No,” he said, then lit up again, snapping his fingers. “The balcony in the control room. That one’s reasonably easy to access.”

John holstered his pistol. “You want me to throw you off the control room balcony.”

“Yeah,” Rodney said. 

“Okay,” John said. Which was completely insane, but also, well, so was pretty much everything when it came to Rodney. Like everything else, it didn’t bear thinking about. 


	5. Heat-Seeking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rodney likes to snuggle. John freaks the fuck out, and not in the usual way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> update: I knew I had gotten the idea of O'Neill puking on a Gou'auld from somewhere. It's in [Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves](http://archiveofourown.org/works/73472?view_full_work=true), by Auburn. And it's much like this-- a character mentions the story in passing. But, credit where credit's due.

 

Rodney was a heat-seeking slow-motion missile in his sleep, all persistence and tenacity. John noticed it first on a mission where he was keeping watch, fortunately; Rodney sought out Ford’s body heat instinctively and persistently, and in the four hours John sat in the front of the jumper watching the HUD, Rodney rolled across most of the jumper’s rear compartment three different times and wrapped himself, completely unconscious, around Ford. Each time Ford eventually woke, disconcerted, and disentangled himself and moved, until finally the third time he just traded a resigned look with John and wrapped his arms around Rodney tentatively. Rodney burrowed in with a sigh and fell into an even deeper sleep, if such a thing were possible.

John thought maybe he would be okay with such a thing, but then he knew he had strange and sometimes unpredictable reactions to being touched. He took the observations into account and generally made a habit of sleeping on the far side of some obstacle from Rodney. One time Rodney heat-seeked him while he was sitting at the doorway of the impromptu shelter, on watch; Rodney rolled in his sleep and wrapped himself around John’s waist, and in bemusement John sat there the rest of his watch shift with one hand on Rodney’s shoulder, letting the man drool on his hip. It wasn’t the contact that was the problem. Mostly. Maybe. 

John wasn’t sure what the trigger was, but he knew people touching him freaked him out sometimes, and he wasn’t willing to make the explanations that would be necessary. So he took pains to keep himself outside easy touching distance, and avoid being a heat-seeking target at night. 

It was sort of cute, he reflected once when he woke and discovered that Rodney had wrapped himself around Teyla, who was curled around her bantos sticks as though they were a teddy bear. He took to documenting Rodney’s sleep-adventures with the digital camera, and before long there was a small collection of photos in a folder, of Rodney curled around various inappropriate people or things. (Sometimes he heat-seeked machinery in his sleep. It was good none of it was dangerous.)

“Heat-seeked isn’t even really a word,” Rodney said, disgruntled as he woke one morning to the beep of the camera as John documented another awkward wrapped-around-a-resigned-Ford experience and the inevitable theatrics ensued when he realized John had made a sport of this. 

John just shrugged, refused to delete the photo, and went about the mission as usual. 

 

His reaction wasn’t as bad as he’d been afraid it would be. 

It was worse.

John flailed to semiconsciousness, hand connecting too forcefully with something soft, scrambled madly, and only woke up, disoriented and panicking, when he slammed shoulder-first into a wall. He slid down the wall, half-stunned, heart racketing so hard it shook his body, gasping for breath, and stared into the darkness in profound, panicked disorientation. Hands. Hands grabbing— hands grabbing him— 

“Ow, what the fuck,” blustered Rodney’s shrill voice, familiar, grounding, and John felt the wall under his hands and tried to still the blind panic beating at him in the darkness. There was a scrabbling noise, Rodney flailing his way upright, and in the dim light John finally could make out his form, backed up against the other wall, staring in wide-eyed terror. 

John tried to speak but he couldn’t remember how words worked, and instead simply gasped for breath, pressing a hand to his shuddering chest. “Christ,” he managed finally. 

“Sheppard?” Rodney demanded, still badly frightened. “Was that _you_?”

A deep, racking shudder ran through John’s body at that. Hands, hands touching him, grabbing him, holding him, trapping him, he couldn’t escape, he couldn’t, ah God. “Fuck,” he said, “holy shit,” and there was a click and suddenly a battery lantern illuminated the room where they were sleeping, illuminated the tangled blankets John had abruptly fled, illuminated the red mark on Rodney’s sleep-swollen face that would become a bruise. 

Obviously it also illuminated John and his utter terrified disorientation, because Rodney’s expression softened and he said, “Sheppard, are you okay?”

His self-control stuttered frantically, trying to come back online, and he blurted, “Fine, I’m fine,” and shoved his back flat, hard, against the wall, trying to control his shaking. “It’s, it’s nothing, I’m fine.” He’d said it too many times. Shit. He wanted to rub his face but he couldn’t peel his hands away from the wall. 

“Major,” Rodney said calmly, sympathetically, “do you get night terrors?” He was on his hands and knees now, approaching, and John’s panic suddenly ratcheted up a notch. 

“No no no,” he stuttered frantically, trying and failing badly to get control of himself, “I just— nightmare, and you touched— you touched me and I thought— the nightmare— I ah _please don’t touch me Christ Rodney please_.” The last came out in a frantic rush as Rodney got inexorably closer and pure reflex sent John scrambling further along the wall. 

Rodney stopped, hands up, palms out, nonthreatening, sitting on his heels, and John stared at him from his awkward sprawl along the wall and tried to stop shaking. For just a couple of seconds right as he woke he’d flashed back to being back in that room with those brutal hands on him and the helplessness and terror and fury and shame and all of it. He really, he really wanted to calm himself down, wanted to reassure Rodney, wanted to apologize, fuck, he’d pretty much punched him, wanted to pull his hands off this wall and rub his face, but he was completely paralyzed, completely shut down, and twenty years of not talking about it hadn’t put any real distance there at all. 

“Major,” Rodney said, more patient and kind than John had expected he’d be capable of, “it’s all right, it’s just the two of us, we’re in an empty room on Atlantis in the quadrant with no transporters, we hiked in yesterday, remember? We parked the jumper at the top of the tower, climbed all the way down here, and sacked out here to resume explorations after dawn tomorrow once we have light back. Remember that? If you need help we can radio and someone will come get us right away.”

“Yeah,” John said. _Apologize,_ he told himself, but he wasn’t listening, his manners were still in a gibbering heap with his self-control and pretty much everything except his terror reflexes. Rodney could be speaking in tongues for all John could engage his rational brain to comprehend him. “Yeah. It’s okay.”

Rodney looked around the room, rubbing his eyes and yawning. “So you were having a nightmare and I…” His mouth turned slanty, and he laughed a little. “I must’ve heat-seeked you.” He shook his head. “Should be ‘sought’, Major.”

“‘Heat-sought’ sounds stupid, McKay,” John’s mouth supplied automatically, and he sucked in a breath and freed his hands from the wall to rub his face. Some of the vibrating tension went out of him and he took a couple more deep breaths, letting his head fall back against the wall, adrenaline settling into sick waves of trembling through his muscles and tendons. He felt the nausea in time to haul himself to his feet and make it out the door, and then he threw up, nothing but watery stomach acid and a little bit of last night’s Powerbar. 

“Good Lord, Major,” Rodney said, when he stumbled back into the room and sat back down, shaky. “Are you all right?”

“Hand me the canteen,” John said, voice rough. He’d nearly mastered his breathing again. Christ, this was embarrassing. At least he hadn’t pissed himself. He took a swig, rinsed his mouth, spit on the floor, swigged again and swallowed it. “Thanks,” he said finally. “And… sorry. I didn’t mean—“ He gestured vaguely at Rodney’s face, then looked away. “I’m, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, Sheppard,” McKay said, frowning in a manner completely unlike his usual impatient one. He moved closer, and John fought down a flinch, fought it down with everything he had, managed to get it down to a twitch, but Rodney noticed and very carefully kept several feet of distance between them as he settled his back against the wall. “You barely connected. I shouldn’t have grabbed you in your sleep, it stands to reason you’re a bit high-strung.”

John nodded, staring into middle distance, and nodded again, and finally rubbed at his face and took another swig from the canteen. “High-strung doesn’t cover it,” he admitted finally. 

“You wanna talk about it?” McKay asked, carefully diffident.

“Christ no,” John said, face on hands, elbows on knees. The sick terror was still letting itself down through his muscle fibers, down into the spaces between his veins, ugh, and his mouth still tasted of bile. Twenty years of not talking about it had done him so much fucking good, after all. “It’s PTSD, Rodney,” he said finally, into the silence that echoed with Rodney’s heroic keeping-shut-of-his-mouth. It was an effort John appreciated.

Silence changed flavor, to bafflement. “I don’t know what that is,” Rodney said. 

John raised his head and looked over at McKay dubiously. “You’re on an insane expedition filled with people that have been through unimaginable horrors and you don’t know what PTSD is? Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’d wager almost everyone here has it.” 

Rodney shook his head. “That sounds like a soft sciences thing,” he hedged. 

“Fuck you,” John said, and rubbed his face. 

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Rodney said, rustling as he made an abortive gesture to touch John. “I just don’t know anything about… Christ, you look like you need a hug.”

“I will fucking throw up on you,” John said, “if you fucking touch me.”

“What are you, a vulture?” Rodney asked. John blinked at him. “They puke in self-defense.”

Despite himself, John laughed. “I’ll work on that,” he said. “Sounds like a good one.”

“O’Neill did it once,” McKay said. “Puked on a Gou’auld.”

“Nice,” John said. His head was pounding now and he felt like he’d run twenty miles without stretching before or after. And his mouth tasted like a snake’s asshole. At least he could notice how shit he felt instead of just freaking out mindlessly. He was certainly never going to fall back asleep. He sneaked a glance at Rodney, who was watching him unhappily. “Don’t look like that, McKay,” he said a little gruffly. 

“I fucked up,” Rodney said, “and I don’t quite understand it, and I really don’t want to fuck up like that again.”

“Next time you could lose a tooth,” John said glumly. 

“It’s not that,” Rodney said crossly, “you’ve hit me harder than that. Hell, Teyla’s caused more damage to me from across the room. It’s that I certainly hurt you and I really, really don’t want to do that.” 

John gritted his teeth, and said, “You didn’t hurt me, Rodney, you just triggered the fuck outta me. It’s not your fault, you were fucking _asleep_.”

“Triggered,” Rodney said. 

John sighed, letting his teeth unclench, and patted the wall next to him. “Come over here, I won’t puke on you. Just don’t grab me.” Rodney slid tentatively along the wall and stopped a couple of feet away. “Come on, McKay, I’m not made of glass.”

Rodney slid a little closer, and John scootched himself over until their shoulders just touched. It felt better, warmth and solidity and comfort but no constriction. John sighed again, settling back into his own skin, and tilted his head back against the wall. “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” he said, “can happen when something really, really shitty happens to you, and you get on with your life, but after that things will trigger your sense-memories and give your nervous system a jolt like you’re reliving the traumatic event. It can be visual triggers, sound triggers, sensation triggers, touch or smell or motion. Happens to veterans a lot. Happens to abuse survivors. I’m pretty sure most everyone on this expedition has PTSD by now.”

“That was very textbook of you,” Rodney said. “Impressive.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time in therapists’ offices,” John said dryly, squinting. “I know all of the catchphrases.”

“Does this happen a lot?” Rodney asked. 

“No,” John answered. “Almost never.” He scrubbed his fingers across the back of his head, fluffing up the shorter hair there, scratching at his scalp. His neck muscles were screaming, his shoulders— he’d pulled something when he’d slammed into the wall. “Eh,” he said, “sometimes. Mostly people touching me. Grabbing me hard when I don’t expect it. That’s about it.” He considered it a moment. “Or spraying blood in my eyes, that one sets me off sometimes too.”

“And I grabbed you from behind when you weren’t expecting it,” Rodney said, and from the corner of his eye John could see the hard slanty line of Rodney’s mouth, unhappy and wry. 

“Yeah,” John said. “I think— it’s not just—“ He shook his mind. “I know you didn’t mean it, Rodney. I don’t mind it. I’m not going to be mad at you. I’m just really embarrassed. I fucking hate being reminded of it.”

“Don’t be embarrassed,” Rodney said quietly. “I’ve had a lot more embarrassing freakouts in front of you for far less good reasons. I guess I have a little bit of PTSD though, some stuff really freaks me out disproportionately— is that what it’s about?”

“Maybe?” John shot Rodney a look, knowing there was no way he’d be able to say how grateful he was that Rodney wasn’t being a dick about this, and hoping his expression would maybe say enough of it, because he really did not have the words. “Heightmeyer knows all about that stuff.”

“Have you been to see her much?” Rodney asked. “I admit, I was thinking about it, but it seemed sort of… I kind of had to go to counselors sometimes when I was a kid and I never thought they knew jack-shit.”

John swigged from the canteen again, wishing he had some gum. Well, he had a toothbrush with him. He could probably go brush his teeth. “She’s nice,” he said finally, noncommittal. 

“You didn’t answer the question, though,” Rodney pointed out, and there was something to be said for having dumb friends. John looked at his hands. 

“Thing with therapists,” he said, “they kinda have to take you apart and let you put yourself back together?” He shot Rodney a look. “I don’t have time for that. Can’t really afford to be less together than I already am, even if it’s temporary. So I make my people go, and it’s not hypocritical of me. I really don’t think there’s any shame in it, I think it’s useful and helpful. I just, you know, can’t.” He shrugged. “Maybe next time I have a bad injury and have some downtime for recuperation.”

Rodney nodded, John could see his head moving from the corner of his eye. “I guess combat would do that to you,” he said.

“Sure,” John said, digging his fingers into the back of his neck in a futile attempt to get the muscles to unlock. “The blood in the eyes thing— that was a helicopter crash in Nicaragua, the time I broke my femur— that one was pretty rough.”

“This one too?” Rodney asked, and John turned his head away, digging his fingers into the attachment points for the trapezius muscle, down at his shoulder blade.

“No,” he admitted finally. Rodney was being so good about not being a dick. “McKay, I am so thoroughly in a place where I’m really not going to talk about it, I’m gonna have to wimp out and ask you not to ask me any more questions.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. He was silent a moment, and John gave up on impromptu neck massage as ineffective, and rotated his head instead, grimacing as one of the littler muscles somewhere deep in the shoulder blade assembly went into spasm. Rodney nudged John’s shoulder with his, after a moment. “Sorry,” he said. “Part of being bad with people is not knowing when not to pry.”

“You do fine,” John said shortly, uncomfortable. He shot Rodney a look. “I’m bad with people too, y’know. I can charm them but that’s all trial and error. Mostly error.” 

“Did you hurt your shoulder?” Rodney asked.

John grimaced. “Muscle spasms,” he said. “I slammed into the wall and also my entire nervous system flipped out. It happens, don’t worry about it.” He breathed in slow and deep, breathed out slow, hissed a little, checked his watch. 4:32 am. “Shit, McKay, go back to sleep.”

Rodney snorted. “Not likely,” he said. “We’ve got about an hour before the sky lightens.”

“Do we have any way of producing coffee?” John asked, without much hope.

“I brought a couple of breakfast MREs,” Rodney said. “They have the heat packs in ‘em. It sorta works.”

“Close enough,” John said. He was feeling kind, so he added, out loud, “Bless you and your food-hoarding.”

Rodney was on his wavelength enough that he just snorted, instead of protesting. “Somebody’s gotta care about these things,” he said, not taking offense. When he moved to prepare the coffee, John’s shoulder was warm where he’d been pressed. 


	6. Tap, Rack, Bang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a large chunk of the work I wrote for the Final Ever Annual McShep Match, 2013, for Team Cool, on the prompt Hang Fire. This bit by itself was going to stand alone, but I had so much of the rest of this written, I had to resolve it.  
> So now I'm posting it in the spot where it goes among alllll the backstory I wrote. So I can't of course post it until after the challenge is over, and I will also post it as it was for the challenge, so their links won't break and all, but this is the more complete version. More edited, too; I submitted that with only the most cursory of proofreading. 
> 
> Summary: If you expect it to go bang and it goes click, keep it pointed in a safe direction and call for help.  
> The character of Dr. Irina Kolesnikova was borrowed from Martha Wells' excellent SG:A novel Reliquary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the challenge I wasn't comfortable making notes like this, but I wanted to put in here a couple quick things. Sheppard's characterization, both in his Competent Gun Safety mode and in his efficient crisis response, owes a great deal to my father, a 30+ year Army officer (veteran of Vietnam, Gulf War 1, and the home front of Gulf War 2 because he was too old for them to let him go over).

John was ignoring McKay. Ignoring the crossed arms, ignoring the tight slant of the mouth, ignoring the glowering lowered brows. Ignoring the eye rolls, ignoring the occasional indignant huffs and sighs. And especially ignoring the smell of real, actual fresh coffee from the mug at the man’s elbow.

He wasn’t about to ignore the bitching, though.

“Really, Major,” McKay said, “this is appallingly basic and a waste of—-"

“We are not going over this again,” John said. “I made Peterson do push-ups, I’ll do the same to you. If you’re interested in not wasting your time, you’ll close your mouth except to ask relevant questions you really need answered. I assure you, everyone else in this room will also appreciate it.”

“Yeah, shut up, McKay,” said a woman scientist. Simpson, John thought.

“I’m done zipping your people into body bags,” John said. “So, as I was saying. Sight picture. Breathing control. Safety protocol.” He checked them off on the whiteboard as he went. He’d commandeered one of the whiteboards from a science lab; apparently Sumner hadn’t requisitioned one, preferring, incredibly, to do everything in PowerPoint. Despite being a career soldier John was not as enamored of PowerPoint as most. Sure, he could hack it, but for this sort of thing, it was better to draw. He knew from experience that many, many people zoned out the instant you pulled up the first slide, and he would bet anything most of the people in this room had done precisely that when first taught these materials. He unfastened the padded case and pulled out the handguns inside, setting one down on the table in front of each person in the classroom. “Each of these weapons has a tag with it, with its serial number. Write your name on the one that belongs to your weapon, and I’ll collect them. You are to carry this weapon with you everywhere for three days. Know where it is at all times. Do not leave it anywhere. Do not do anything stupid with it. Maintain it. And I have booked each of you into practice slots at the firing range. You may switch slots around to suit your schedule, but you are to clear it with the rangemaster. Skipping sessions is not allowed. This is three days, people. And there will be a test at the end.”

He supervised while they all filled out the little tags, and put them neatly into the folder he’d Velcroed into the top of the case. There was some shuffling and grumbling and mumbling, but everyone cooperated. McKay glared and glowered, acting as though John had personally wronged him, but signed the tag with a flourish, and John noted that he wrote PhD., PhD. after his signature. _What a dork._

It surprised John that the thought was accompanied with such fondness. Well, he supposed it was nice for once to not be the dorkiest one in a room. And he’d really gotten used to Rodney over the last couple of months. They shared a bathroom, since the good rooms with the balconies didn’t have ensuite bathrooms, and the guy wasn’t actually at all a bad semi-roommate. And their senses of humor were shockingly compatible.

He waited until everyone had filled out the little tags, put the folder away, and then turned to the whiteboard again. “Now,” he said, and wrote MAINTENANCE on the board. “Each of the holsters with those weapons has a cleaning kit in it. Guess what? Those aren’t decorative. To avoid a firearms malfunction, you need to clean those pistols every day, or every time they’re fired. You all have a more advanced grasp of chemistry than I do, I am sure, and so I do not need to explain to you why this is so.”

A man had his hand up, and John paused, regarding him. Phillips? He wasn’t sure what department the man was with. “Yes?” he said.

“I just wondered,” the man said, slightly nervous, “I’d heard we were worried about an ammunition shortage. Are we going to be okay?”

John gave the guy a friendly grin. “We are indeed gonna be okay,” he said. “The mission where Lt. Ford broke his leg last week? We established a secure supply for the last of the materials we needed to reload our own bullets. So while we still have to be careful with some of our weapons, the 9mm pistols I just handed out to you all have, as far as we’re concerned, an unlimited supply of bullets. Just make sure to save your brass casings whenever you get the chance. Those are tricky to make. But the bullets themselves, we have sorted out.”

“Ah,” Philips said, comprehension clearing his expression. Several other people nodded slowly; it had become clear to them too. John realized that there was probably some sort of conspiracy theory blossoming among the scientists about why they were all being retrained so intensively now.

He let his eyes slide over toward McKay, who looked even more exasperated, but smug underneath that, and realized that part of McKay’s huffing and posturing had been to reassure the others. If he had been wide-eyed and frightened and eager, they would’ve assumed the rumors to be true.

Or maybe John was imagining it, and McKay really was just being a pain in the ass. He filed his suspicion carefully away: he’d always figured McKay just hid behind the Bad With People label, and the suspicion was rather frequently reinforced. “So we’re truly, genuinely just doing all these retrainings because now there are enough bullets for it, and I have the downtime while my teammate is injured. So calm yourselves and focus. Maintenance is even more important when you’re working with handloads; you’re at far greater risk for firearms malfunctions, hang fires, squibs, misfires, duds and the like, and having your weapon in perfect working order can help reduce the risks.”

Someone giggled, and someone else echoed it, and John looked with perfect patient blankness at the group until one of the gigglers raised her hand. “Yes?” he said blandly. He knew she was a botanist but he couldn’t remember her name.

“What’s a squib?” she asked, and her companion giggled again.

John blinked. “A squib is, um,” what was so funny? Several people were laughing now. “What?”

“A squib is the non-magical offspring of a pair of wizards, in the Harry Potter universe,” McKay said, dry with annoyance.

John raised his eyebrows. “Ah,” he said. “I had that on my to-read pile but it was over the weight limit for my McMurdo transport. Unfortunately a squib in real life is a charge that didn’t have enough primer to get it down the barrel, so it’s lodged in your gun, and if you try to fire another round, your gun’s gonna explode and take your hand off. We’re gonna have a session on that later. For now all you gotta know is if you’re expecting it to go bang and it goes click instead, keep it pointed downrange and call for help. Know what, I need you all to focus on me again, so repeat what I just said. If you’re expecting it to go bang and it goes click instead, what do you do?”

“Keep it pointed downrange and call for help,” said Simpson, too fast, looking smug.

“Thank you,” John said blandly. He pointed at one of the women who had been giggling and was still grinning. “Can you repeat the whole phrase?”

She looked like a deer caught by headlights. “Um,” she said.

“I lost you at squib,” John said. “I knew it. Can anyone catch her up?”

There was a ragged chorus of the whole sentence, and John wrote it on the board. Predictably, a wiseass asked, “What if it’s just unloaded?”

“Then you probably weren’t really expecting it to go bang,” John said, still writing. “You should always be ready for it to go bang, of course. But we’re gonna go through all the troubleshooting you can do on your own a little at a time. First off, just remember to keep it pointed in a safe direction, and eventually the person you’re gonna call for help is gonna be yourself. But for right now, it’s whoever’s in charge of the range, or whoever’s the military guy or, um, woman on your team.” He waved a hand. “And if it turns out the thing was unloaded, then good, you don’t have a problem. Better that than assuming it wasn’t loaded and blowing your fool head off or, worse, someone else’s.”

 

They made their efficient way through loading and unloading, clearing the chamber, chambering a round, clearing the weapon, and then John made them all field-strip the guns and clean them, then reassemble them. He kept his personal sidearm holstered the whole time, and demonstrated the process on a dirty 9mm he’d used at the firing range a little while before, while finalizing the curriculum for this class. (He carried a hi-cap Colt 45 single-action that he'd bought himself, which was kind of a hot shot gun but he was kind of a hot shot so there.)

Eventually they all made their way to the door, and John erased everything from the whiteboard and wrote the introductory notes to begin the next session. He was gonna pawn the rest of these off on Ford once the guy had his walking cast. Supposed to get it tomorrow or so.

He got the whiteboard set up, finished the rest of his bottle of water, and turned around, to find McKay still sitting at the table, arms crossed over his chest, weapon still sitting in its holster on the desk.

“Permission to speak, Major?” McKay asked, acidly formal.

“Christ’s sake, McKay,” John said, “what?”

“I forsee disaster with all these guns lying around,” McKay said.

“I have forseen all the disasters I could see my way to,” John said, “and I figured these people are all supposed to be geniuses. I have the serial numbers written down. All the magazines I gave you-all are marked with little paint dots. If anybody’s careless with the equipment, I’ll know who it was, I have Elizabeth’s permission to chew their asses out, and I’m gonna sic Bates on ‘em to do it so it gets done right. You want a good ass-chewing, you get a Marine sergeant with an axe to grind to do it.”

“Bates has an axe to grind?” McKay asked.

“Of course he fucking does,” John said. He scrubbed tiredly at his face, glanced at his watch. An hour. If he snagged his laptop he could get some paperwork done and eat a late lunch before the next session. He unplugged the laptop and brought it with him. “His CO got shot by some fuck-up of a flyboy he doesn’t know from Adam, and he’s in a distant fucking galaxy with no way home. I surely do understand his point of view.” He paused at the door. “I’m going to go eat a goddamn sandwich so if you’re through sulking I wouldn’t mind some company, but if not, I’ll see you later.”

McKay hesitated a moment, but when John left the room, McKay was behind him, and he wasn’t sulking anymore.

 

Ford was leaning on his crutches and had an unguarded look of pain on his face.

"G’wan,” John said. “Get outta here.”

“I’m fine, sir,” Ford said stubbornly.

“I got orders from Beckett not to let you stand longer than an hour, max,” John said.

“I was on the stool,” Ford protested. “Foot up and everything.”

“Yeah but you’re not now,” John said. “Get back to your quarters and take your horse pill, I’ve already made you teach three classes today.”

“Yeah but this is what I do,” Ford said. “Everybody else is bitching about this initiative. I’m like the only person who’s totally psyched. Don’t make me miss out.”

John gave him a sidelong grin, ignoring the twinge about his newfound unpopularity. “I get that,” he said, “but I also want you to heal up quick, and that means following the doctor’s orders. Anyway there’s not much left to do here but make sure everybody completes their test rounds. Hand me that clipboard, you’re relieved.”

“Yessir,” Ford said, and John saw him almost salute and decide against it, so he traded grins with him and walked up to stand behind the current shooter. There were four or five scientists milling around, two loading magazines and one inspecting her completed target. Dr. Dickinson was firing, first a free shoot focusing on aim, and then second he’d shoot another magazine in rapid-fire on a new target. He was obviously still doing the free shoot, firing slowly and squinting downrange after each one.

He was a nice enough kid, not one of the ones who’d given John trouble so far. John paused to look at the target of the woman who’d just fired. “That’s a good cluster,” he said. “Doesn’t matter that it’s a little off-center. As you get to know that weapon, you can adjust. Well done. That’s progress.”

She gave him a look full of adoration and he favored her with an almost-flirty smirk back. Some of the scientists, more females than males but narrowly, could still be won over by the Flyboy Hunk routine. John tried not to overdo it, but a little judicious application of eyebrows and lip-biting greased the wheels a little here and there. No harm in it. She took the target with her as she left. “Don’t forget to maintain your weapon,” he called after her, and pulled on his ear protection as he stepped forward to watch Dickinson.

Dickinson turned to see him as he ejected his magazine and pressed the button to bring the target forward for inspection and replacement. There was a smattering of holes low and to the left, then a scatter up and to the right. “Looks like you overcorrected a little,” John said, shoving one of the ear pieces up.

“Yeah,” Dickinson said glumly, unhooking the target and giving it a once-over, tight-lipped.

“Eh,” John said, “it’s all progress. The point is, you’re more comfortable with the weapon. And I’d say on pretty much all targets, even this level of accuracy would be a healthy deterrent.”

Dickinson was immune to flirting, but liked approval, and smiled cautiously. “Except Wraith,” he said. “From what I’ve heard.”

“Eh well,” John said, “not much deters them. We’ll get into more tactical placement of bullets once everyone’s comfortable with rapid-fire and general handling.”

Dickinson nodded, ejected the magazine and replaced it with the full one. John eyed the gun barrel, noting that it was fingerprinted and dirty. He’d bet the guy hadn’t been cleaning the gun. He was going to seek him out the next morning and make a point of inspecting the weapon to make sure it was clean, and if it wasn’t, he was selling the guy out to Bates. Nice kid only got you so far.

John stepped back, settling his ear protection into place and thinking about how nice it was to have a real honest-to-God Marine sergeant to be Bad Cop. He’d never been that good at it himself, but Bates had no problem at all with it. And he was no slouch, brains-wise. Not John’s first choice for a candlelight dinner, but he could’ve done much worse with a head of security. Sumner hadn’t been an idiot at all to have picked him out, and it was a damn shame, a crying goddamn shame, the guy had lasted so briefly. John had been perfectly prepared to slouch around and piss the guy off; he’d been counting on finding something he was good at so he could stay out of the guy’s way. Shooting him hadn’t been in the plan, and replacing him, well. That one wasn’t even in wildest dreams territory. At least it hadn’t been a disaster so far.

Well, ok, but only sort of a disaster.

John hit the timer, and Dickinson started the rapid fire. Bang, bang, bang, bang, _click_. Dickinson flinched, hesitated, looked at the gun in bewilderment, and turned toward John.

“Keep it pointed downra—“ John yelled urgently, and then it went off.

The impact spun John around, and he landed on his hands and knees. There was no pain, and he blinked for a moment, wondering if somehow he’d managed not to— oh no, that pattering sound was blood, and it wasn’t— nope, it was his. Something was really wrong with his left thigh, huh, the same one where he had the rod and pins from the broken femur. Hm.

Dickinson was yelling, Ford was yelling, McKay was yelling— what was McKay doing here? John rolled to sit on his butt, tore the already-ripped fabric of his blood-soaked pants to expose the wound, and stuck his thumb in to press down where blood was spurting. That was a major blood vessel. Not the femoral artery or John would already be dead, but a big one nonetheless. That was a whole shitload of blood. Dickinson was slipping in the blood, slipped and fell and thankfully set the gun down, muzzle downrange, and knelt to stare in horror at John’s face.

Oh right, John still had his ear protection on. He pulled it off and the room got a whole lot noisier. He yanked his radio headset out of his shirt pocket, stuck it on his ear, and keyed it. Nobody was talking on it, which was annoying, because that was probably the first thing they should do.

“Medical team to the firing range,” John said, thinking that he didn’t have a whole lot of time before he bled to death, at this rate. Nothing hurt and he didn’t really feel dizzy but then, he wasn’t feeling anything yet. He kept his thumb jammed down as hard as he could into the wound, pressing down.

“Roger that,” said Beckett’s welcome voice. “Someone yelled something a moment ago— what’s the nature of the emergency?”

“Firearm malfunction,” John said. “One victim. Gunshot wound. Left thigh. Massive bleeding.” If this had happened offworld he’d never have survived it. Of course, his odds were probably about even right now. There was a damn lot of blood on this floor, and more coming.

“It’s damn good to hear your voice,” Beckett said. “We’re already on our way. Someone yelled that you were the one who’d been shot.”

“Oh,” John said, “I was, it’s me bleedin’ out on the firing range floor. RH positive, Beckett, and I’m gonna need a lot of it. I got the blood vessel pinched shut but my fingers are slippin’. It’s a mess, Doc.”

“Christ,” Beckett said.

“What happened?” Dickinson asked. “How did I do that?”

“It was a hang fire,” John said kindly. “Sometimes with a dirty weapon or an inexpert handload or both, the powder doesn’t ignite right away. Do me a favor, stick your thumb right there and press down as hard as you can. Harder than that.”

“I killed you,” Dickinson said, horrified, but pressed down. “Oh my God. I did this.”

“Yeah but not on purpose,” John said, “and that puts you head and shoulders over everybody else who’s ever shot me.” He focused on breathing for a moment.

“Jesus Christ,” Dickinson said.

“And now you’ll never forget to keep your weapon pointed in a safe direction in event of a hangfire,” John said, and then Beckett was cursing at everyone and he let himself pass out.

 

 _Unlock, unlock,_ John thought at the door as hard as he could. _Open_. He heard the click as it unlocked, but it refused to open, no matter how hard he concentrated, which admittedly wasn’t very hard. His throat was closing up and his breath was only coming in a tight wheeze and this was bad, really really really bad. With perfect clarity he could see, in his mind’s eye, his radio resting on the nightstand beside the bed, as bad as miles away from the bathroom floor where he was now. He’d dropped his crutches in the dizzy spell that had sent him crashing to the floor, and he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t—

He lay on his back with his head arched back, struggling to get just a little more air, just a little, Christ he was a moron. It was the antibiotics, it had to be; he’d started itching the day before, and had come up in welts, but he’d just figured it was one of those things. He shouldn’t have taken this morning’s dose. Oh God he was going to die on the bathroom floor and it was so fucking stupid. He even had an Epi-Pen. Two of them. Ever since Rodney had joined his team and he’d confirmed with Beckett that the allergies were real. He’d used it on him once offworld, and it was awful, but ever since then, yeah, he kept an Epi-Pen around.

In his room. Down the hall. God he was fucked.

The door hissed open. “Oh,” McKay said, then, “Sheppard?”

John wheezed at him, rolling his eyes— darkness was crowding in and he couldn’t even get part of a breath, he was passing out, and McKay said, “Shit!” and left.

He lost a minute or two then, and suddenly someone was stabbing him in his good leg, and he sucked in about a teaspoonful of air and rolled his eyes as open as he could get them. “Stay with me,” McKay said. “Hey. Stay with me, Sheppard. Count back from thirty with me and you’ll be okay. Okay? Twenty nine, twenty eight, twenty seven—“

John let the numbers wash over him for a moment, lost in the struggle to breathe. McKay had pulled his head and shoulders into his lap and had a hand on his neck. By _twelve_ , John had figured out that McKay was either bracing his jaw for better airway clearance, or taking his pulse, or both. By _eight_ , he’d remembered that he was wearing a towel and a bandage and that was it, and the towel was probably not really on him anymore after all the thrashing. By _one_ , he realized he was breathing, and that felt amazing enough that he stopped worrying about being naked on the bathroom floor with an astrophysicist.

“God,” McKay said, “what are the odds that you’d almost die twice in a week?”

“High,” John wheezed, “but I hadn’t— expected—“

“What on earth gave you this reaction?” McKay asked, looking around. He found the towel and to John’s relief, slung it over him.

“Antibiotics,” John said fuzzily, tucking the towel back around his hips. “Help me sit up, this floor’s fucking freezing.”

“Give me your radio,” McKay said. John shot him a disgusted look, and he finally connected the dots. “Oh. Right. You don’t have it. Well, I dropped mine while pawing around looking for my Epi-Pen.”

John closed his eyes and just breathed for a minute. “I feel like shit,” he said, realizing he was shaking.

“Believe me,” McKay said, “I know. I gotta call Beckett, you’re still pretty messed-up. But you’re breathing and that’s something.”

“Yeah,” John said. He was breathing better and better, though his heart was still pounding. “Shit.”

“Can you sit up?” McKay asked. “I gotta go get the radio.”

“Yeah,” John said. McKay half-dragged him and propped him against the wall. He was only gone a minute, but John was shivering uncontrollably by the time he got back.

“Oh dear,” McKay said, “that doesn’t look so good.”

“F-fuckin’ f-f-f-freezing in here,” John managed.

“You’re in shock,” McKay said. “It’s like, 25 centigrade in here.”

Just then Beckett and two guys with a gurney came swarming in like the world was ending, and John protested feebly but let them strap him to the thing and cart him off to an ordeal of being poked, prodded, injected, vomiting in a mortifyingly embarrassing fashion all over Carson, getting pumped so full of God-knows-what that he almost vibrated off the bed, and finally not being allowed to go to sleep.

Gradually the fuss died down, and Elizabeth came to see him and made somewhat awkward and bizarrely indirectly snide conversation that John didn’t really remember. He did note she had her sidearm in a belt holster. It made him feel better to see it.

He pointed at it. “How many bullets in the magazine?” he asked.

“Fourteen,” she answered.

“When did you last clean it?”

“Last night,” she said. “I promise.”

“Good,” he said.

“Poor Dickinson,” Elizabeth said, “he came to me in actual tears over the whole thing. He hadn’t cleaned his gun and he’s convinced that’s why it malfunctioned.”

“I’d noticed, actually,” John said. “I was gonna call him on it the next day.”

“That’s not why it happened, is it?” Elizabeth asked.

John rode out a hard shiver. “Hard to say,” he said. “Dirty guns are more likely to malfunction. Inexpert handloads, like we’re firing now, are more likely to malfunction. Could’ve been either. Could’ve been that the powder got damp somehow. Could’ve been a lot of things. I’m not mad at him. I wasn’t mad at the time. It’s fine. He should probably talk it out with Heightmeyer. And clean his damn gun like I told him to.”

“The joke has by now been worn out that you’re not doing this for your health,” Elizabeth said dryly.

“No shit,” John said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m probably going to violently throw up, or maybe have a seizure.”

“Oh dear,” she said. “Should I get Dr. Beckett?”

“Naw,” John said, “I already puked on him. Get somebody I haven’t barfed on yet. I like variety.”

“Um,” Elizabeth said, “okay,” and left the room.

“I was kidding,” John called weakly.

 

It took John almost 24 solid hours of sleep, plus 8 or so of infirmary routine and physical therapy and its aftermath, to go stir-crazy again. “McKay,” he said into the radio, about fifteen minutes after the man had exploded into a rant on the command channel. “McKay, this is Sheppard, come in.”

“What do you want?” Radio protocol wasn’t exactly at the top of Atlantis’s hierarchy of good manners.

“Just checkin’ to see if you had an aneurysm yet. I worry, sometimes.”

He grinned gleefully at Beckett as the doctor walked by, flinching away from the torrent of profanity flowing down the command channel.

After a moment, Elizabeth’s voice said, “Doctor Beckett.”

“Beckett here,” the doctor answered, standing with his hand on his hip at the foot of John’s bed.

“Is Major Sheppard still in the infirmary?”

“Yes, he is,” Beckett said.

“Maybe you need to find something to entertain him so he stops poking the scientists on the command channel.” Elizabeth’s voice was dry.

“Consider him released,” Beckett answered, and clicked off. “Major Sheppard, do you think you can avoid dying if I let you go?”

“I’ll stay away from the scientists,” John said, already reaching for his crutches.

“You do that,” Beckett said. “Though, to be fair, just now, one did save your life.”

John tilted his head in acknowledgement, levered himself up to his feet, and swung out down the hallway, barefoot and in scrubs, rather than waiting for someone to bring him clothes.

 

 

 

> “"I'll drink it! Let's have a bottle of rum!" shouted Pierre, banging the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb out of the window. They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone who touched him was sent flying. "No, you'll never manage him that way," said Anatole. "Wait a bit and I'll get round him.... Listen! I'll take your bet tomorrow, but now we are all going to —’s.” "Come on then," cried Pierre. "Come on!... And we'll take Bruin with us." And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the ground, and began dancing round the room with it.”

John put his finger in the book and raised his eyes to the door. “It’s unlocked,” he yelled, sparing a moment’s thought for how his mother would have scolded him for ‘hollering’. She would have pronounced it with that dry precision that had marked her humor, and probably would have ruffled his hair afterward.

The door hissed open and McKay came in. “Are you suitably entertained?” he asked, raising his eyebrows and dropping his eyes to the book. John was noticeably not very far into it.

“No,” he said, letting the book close and putting it down. “Russian nobles were as big idiots as everyone else. I don’t really feel like reading about idiots just now.”

“Then come on, Major,” McKay said. “You’re going to prove to the scientists that you’re not a militaristic jock asshole.”

John reached for his crutches obediently, but as he gathered himself to stand, looked up dubiously. “This isn’t going to get me killed, is it?”

“I wouldn’t have saved your life yesterday if I planned to take it today,” McKay said, with particular lofty prickliness.

“Fair,” John conceded, and got awkwardly to his feet.

“So, um,” McKay said, “does your leg still hurt a lot?”

“I’ll take you plinking sometime,” John said. “Shoot some empty metal cans with that .9mm and get a look at the exit hole, might give you some idea of whether my leg still hurts a lot.”

“Was it really Davidson’s fault?” McKay asked. “Someone said he’d admitted he never cleaned his gun.”

“Dickinson,” John corrected. He shook his head. “It was an accident,” he went on, “and I wasn’t even mad when it happened, so let’s not talk about whose fault it is, and just let it be.”

“I said it was,” McKay said, “because I knew a bunch of people were slacking about cleaning their guns.”

“I knew they were too,” John said, “and I had planned to address that, but I suppose the drastic approach works.” He sighed. “Fuck shoes. Where are we going and do I have to have shoes on?”

“No,” McKay said, “and no, we’re going to the seventeenth-floor lounge.” He gave John a once-over. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in anything but uniforms or scrubs before.”

“These are my pyjamas,” John admitted. Track pants and a wrinkled black t-shirt. He squinted at McKay. “The scientists are pretty convinced about this militaristic jock asshole thing?”

McKay shrugged. “There’s a lot of resentment about the guns thing.”

“While I was coming out of surgery I heard the nurses talking about how maybe it served me right to get shot,” John said. He sighed. “Hell of a thing.”

“They did _not_ ,” McKay said, stopping short in the hallway and staring in horror.

John shrugged. “Something about putting a stop to my asinine power trip? I dunno. I was semiconscious at the time.”

“Assholes,” McKay muttered, resuming their, to John, annoyingly slow progress down the hall. “Well, for what it’s worth, I was a jerk during the classes, but I’ve been doing the marksmanship exercises and trying to make sure my people all do.”

“Means a lot, Rodney,” John said, the name slipping out and surprising him. To cover his reaction, he reached for the transporter. “Seventeenth floor, you said?”

 

Elizabeth stood in the entryway of the seventeenth-floor lounge for a long moment, shocked into complete silence, before anyone noticed her.

“Ah,” Zelenka said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Doctor Weir.” The room was full of scientists, many still in their blue uniform shirts. Grodin was on the coffee table with Kolesnikova, doing some sort of dance. McKay was balancing on one foot on an end table, poised as if to leap from it. Several others were prostrate with either laughter or drink. The sound that had attracted her was the laughter, and one braying, almost donkey-like guffaw that rang out in their midst, which she realized now with some alarm belonged to none other than Major Sheppard, who was lying on a couch absolutely helpless with mirth.

“Shit!” Grodin said crisply, and leapt off the coffee table. A general scramble ensued, but Major Sheppard made no move to get up; his braying laughter subsided into helpless squawks punctuated with actual giggles.

“Rodney!” Elizabeth said, desperately stern so that she didn’t shriek with laughter. “I told you to make sure Major Sheppard didn’t die, not finish him off yourself!”

“Oh,” McKay said, falling off the end table. He scrambled his way upright but listed slightly leftward as he spoke. He was fucking hammered. “He’s fine. I just, I thought we could keep an eye on him, and if we drank enough maybe nobody would shoot him.” He dissolved into laughter on the last two words, hard enough that he sprayed spit everywhere and collapsed slowly onto the floor, setting Sheppard off into another round of hideous braying laughter.

It was almost sweet, how horrible his laugh was.

“Where on earth did you get the booze?” Elizabeth asked.

“’S’not booze,” Sheppard wheezed, interrupting himself with giggles. “They tol’ me iss solvent. Inss— indus— insustal solvent.”

“It sure is,” Elizabeth said. She snapped her fingers and held out her hand. “Share, Zelenka.” She’d seen the guilty twitch behind his glasses. Maybe it was reflex, but Zelenka knew everything; if he wasn’t behind it, he knew who was.

“I warn you,” Zelenka said, and poured her a carefully measured dose in a small plastic cup, cutting it about half with terrifyingly red liquid, “is truly industrial solvent, but will not blind or kill you.” His eyes flicked up toward her. “Well, in moderate doses,” he amended.

Sheppard squeaked and gasped, trying and failing to sit up. “Major Sheppard,” Elizabeth said, “you are going to have a really truly awful hangover tomorrow.”

“No ranks,” Kolesnikova said. “I am sorry, he is just Sheppard right now.”

Sheppard tried again and managed to sit up, wincing and using both hands to move his bad leg off the couch. “John,” he said, and he sounded a little mournful. “Nobody ever calls me that.”

“Someone get him some water,” Elizabeth said, worried. She accepted the plastic cup from Zelenka, sniffed at it experimentally, then held her nose and tossed it back in one go, wincing at the burn but swallowing gamely. She hadn’t had any alcohol since that bottle of champagne O’Neill had rolled through the gate. The Athosians had the knowledge of winemaking, but had no time or facilities to set it up, and it was too much of an extravagance to trade for when they needed basic necessities.

When her eyes stopped watering she saw that McKay was sitting next to Sheppard on the couch and was tenderly helping him drink from a canteen. _The two of them should hook up,_ she thought absently, before it struck her what a completely improper thought that was and also what a logistical nightmare it had the potential to present. But they both struck her as such lonely men, and if she couldn’t have Sheppard, which she couldn’t (she really couldn’t, she reminded herself sternly), somebody should. Preferably where she could watch.

Oh _dear_.

“What the hell was in that?” Elizabeth asked.

“Industrial solvent, Dr. Weir,” Zelenka said. “Russian antifreeze.”

“If we’re going without ranks,” she said, “it’s Elizabeth, so spill it, Radek.”

“There is a still,” Zelenka said.

“Radek!” Irina Kolesnikova rattled off several words in Russian, and Zelenka spat something back.

“Irina,” Elizabeth said, “it’s all right, I officially know nothing.”

“Me too,” Sheppard said, swaying against Rodney. “I had a bad inneraction with my meds. Thasss all.” He was trying to do his normal charming eyebrows thing but lacked the coordination to pull it off properly. Instead he looked, well, charmingly drunk.

“I hope you did not,” Elizabeth said. “We’ve had quite enough of that already.”

“He’s fine,” Rodney said. “I’m keeping an eye on him.”

“Maybe you had better continue to do that,” Elizabeth said. She put the empty plastic cup down and stood up. “I will leave you all to your entertainment. I just had to investigate the ruckus. Good night, everyone.”

“Good night, Elizabeth,” Irina said. Then, after a moment, “We will invite you next time.”

“Beware,” Sheppard said. “They play weird games.”

“Do they,” Elizabeth said.

“I kept winning Daddy Issues Bingo,” Sheppard went on.

Elizabeth had planned to dismiss whatever he said, but had to address that. “Did you say Daddy Issues Bingo?”

“We do not call it that,” Zelenka said, a little too hurriedly.

“’Stotally what it is,” Sheppard said. “Everyone on this mission had fucked-up childhoods.”

“Yeah, but no,” Rodney said, “yours was exceptionally fucked-up.”

“Had a great childhood,” Sheppard protested. “Just, a shitty dad.”

“You have a strange definition of _great_ ,” Rodney said.

“Hilarious, in retrospect,” Sheppard said. “Okay, okay, okay,” and he gestured toward Elizabeth, “here’s a good one, when my wife and I got divorced my dad got rid of me and kept her. God’s truth, put her in the will and disowned me. Not even making that up.”

“Christ,” Elizabeth said.

“Yeah,” Sheppard said, a little gleefully, but there was a hard edge to it, “thing is, he’d already disowned me, so he couldn’t disown me again, so you can imagine how pissed my brother was, going from sole inheritor to having to share it with my ex-wife. Fucking hilarious.”

Rodney, improbably, was laughing. “It is, kind of,” he said defensively, finally noticing Elizabeth’s expression.

“Good Lord,” Elizabeth said.

“I mean, Radek’s father used to get drunk and beat him,” Rodney said. “That’s not funny. By comparison, Sheppard’s dad is relatively harmless.”

Sheppard nodded, though his face clouded. “Well, there was a bit of that too,” he said, quieter, “but you’re mostly right.” He forced a grin. “We’re the Pony fuckin’ Express out here.”

“Yeah,” Rodney said. “Orphans preferred.” Elizabeth knew Rodney’s parents were both dead, but it struck her that she’d never heard a word about Sheppard’s family before. She’d meant to research him but had run out of time.

She shook her head and backed toward the door. “Good night, all,” she said. “Rodney, make sure Sheppard gets to bed safely and doesn’t die.”

Sheppard winked at her and she finally let herself laugh as she turned away and went down the hall.

 

“Okay,” John admitted, crutch under one arm and Rodney under the other, “I’m pretty wasted.”

“I told you the last four ounces of that shit were a terrible idea,” Rodney said. His body was warm and solid, incredibly comforting to hang onto.

“I think the first six ounces were a terrible idea too,” John pointed out, and giggled. He had to stop doing that, but he was too drunk to rein it in. And too drunk not to be enjoying physical contact far too much. Nobody touched him except in emergencies, and he liked it that way, insisted on it, but God, his nerves were starving. Rodney’s hand on the side of his waist was the best fucking thing ever, and he didn’t have enough resistance in him not to lean into it, not to wish Rodney would move his hand up and touch his ribs, touch his chest, his neck, his jaw. God.

He was in a lot of pain, his leg throbbing deep and sickly-hot with careless overexertion. And he had to pee, badly, but he knew he couldn’t possibly stand up to do it unsupported. It was a tricky situation, and he pondered it as they limped down the hallway. It wasn’t enough to distract him from how goddamn great it felt when Rodney’s hand slid, quite accidentally, under his t-shirt, and broad capable fingers spread across his bare skin, holding him up. He fisted his hand in the shoulder of Rodney’s t-shirt to keep himself from wrapping his fingers around Rodney’s neck and pulling him in close.

“Hurts pretty bad, huh?” Rodney asked, darting him a sidelong look.

“Nah,” John lied. Well, that was sort of true. It had hurt pretty bad when it happened. Now it just hurt sort of really bad. “Mostly I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to go pee.”

“Christ,” Rodney groaned. “If I have to hold you up for that I really don’t know what I’ll do.”

“You might have to,” John said solemnly. “I promise I won’t make you hold my dick.” He grinned. “But if you want to, I mean, that’s cool.”

Rodney actually had no answer for that for a long moment, but finally slanted a narrow-eyed look at John. “Thought you weren’t gay,” he said.

John said lightly, “Not straight either,” and it was the first time he had ever said anything like it, ever, in his life, and it felt kind of awesome, or maybe he just felt awesome because he was drunk and in the coolest place in the universe and the smartest guy he’d ever met had big warm hands holding him up. And the scientists had thought he was funny and none of them seemed to really actually resent him over the guns thing and maybe, just maybe, if he could avoid getting himself killed, he could be good at this job.

“What?” Rodney squawked, but didn’t let go of him, and John leaned on him heavier and grinned. “Sheppard, are you fucking with me?”

“Not at present,” John said.

“Are you _hitting_ on me?” Rodney asked, and stopped then, catching John when he staggered. They slid sideways into the nearby wall and John let his back go flat against it so he faced Rodney directly, his arm still trailing around Rodney’s ribs, fingers curving against his back.

“Only if you want me to,” John said.

Rodney had one arm braced against the wall, and turned to stand a little closer. “You’re really drunk,” he said.

“Drunk man’s words are a sober man’s thoughts,” John said. Though he hadn’t ever thought about this. He hadn’t gotten farther than an idle appreciation of McKay’s company, an unexpectedly keen fondness. He licked his lips and Rodney was looking at his mouth. It was such a long time since he’d played this game, he wasn’t sure anymore how it worked, and he’d never played it with a man, didn’t know how to read their tells like this.

“Really?” Rodney asked. “You’ve been thinking about this?”

“Maybe,” John said. “I didn’t think you were into it though. You’re always on about blondes.”

“I’m not blind,” Rodney said. “You’re the single hottest human I’ve ever met. And yeah, I’m about a 2 on the Kinsey scale.”

“I don’t know what that is,” John admitted, and he was watching Rodney’s mouth now (wide, a hard line, softening in contemplation), and he really didn’t want to move from this position, but he had to. “But I do know I wasn’t lying, I really need to pee.”

“That means I’m bi,” Rodney said. “The Kinsey scale.”

“Huh,” John said. “I didn’t know there was a way of quantifying that.”

“Oh, yeah,” Rodney said. “Zero to six, with zero being exclusively heterosexual and six exclusively homosexual.”

“Okay,” John said, “I really gotta pee. Get me to the balcony, I’ll hang onto the railing.”

“Oh you are not pissing off a balcony,” Rodney said.

“Watch me,” John said.

It took some finangling but he finally got himself out onto the balcony. Rodney refused to come with him. He hung onto the railing and managed not to pee on himself. The cool night breeze sobered him up a little bit, but not much. What the hell was he doing, hitting on McKay? He was the chief science officer and a crucial part of John’s gate team, he really couldn’t fraternize with him. And where did this sudden gayness come from? Well, okay, that wasn’t all that sudden. John had spent his whole life knowing that there were faggots and then there were guys who weren’t, and he was a guy who wasn’t, but like an awful lot of the guys he knew who weren’t, there were things he did sometimes, things he thought about, things he did with other guys who weren’t. He hadn’t done much, and a lot of what he had done (more usually, had done to him) had transparently been about power instead of sex (and boy, did John know the difference), but the stuff he’d thought about… well, that and the stuff he hadn’t let himself think about.

Like McKay’s mouth.

 _No,_ he told himself sternly, and put his track pants back to rights. He was gonna go back in there and put himself to bed and chalk it up to too much industrial solvent. He stepped through his door and McKay was right there, and grabbed him to keep him from falling over as his crutch slid out in surprise.

“Oh, hey,” McKay said, “I was just coming to get you,” and he had his arms around John and his mouth was right there.

“Hey,” John said, and honestly he had no idea if he’d moved closer or Rodney had, but then McKay’s tongue was in his mouth and sliding across his teeth and he let his jaw open and kissed him sloppily back, shocked at the sensation of stubble against his face. Rodney’s hand slid up his back under his shirt.

“We better get you off your feet,” Rodney said, and hauled John down onto the bed with surprising strength, then gently arranged him, propping up the injured leg, tugging John’s shirt up and off over his head.

“Okay,” John said dizzily, and he hadn’t realized how bad his leg hurt until he was off it. Oh Christ he felt amazing right now, and Rodney’s hands were warm on his sides, moving up to his ribs, big capable hands. Nobody’d ever touched John like that; Rodney was bigger than he was, heavier, broader; lying down, John’s couple extra inches of height were insignificant. He stared up at Rodney, a little dazed; the reading light by the bed was on, but it was dark otherwise, and the light caught Rodney’s shocking blue irises. “Come here,” he said, and put his hand on Rodney’s shoulder and pulled him down to kiss him again.

It had literally been years since John had kissed anybody. Nobody since Nancy. And he’d been married to her so long, together so long before that, he didn’t remember what it was like to kiss a different person. He’d kissed a guy that one time, but it had to have been twenty years ago, and things had gone rapidly south after that. Rodney tasted like the sour aftertaste of too-sweet cherry Kool-Aid, tasted like another man’s mouth, tasted like living human, and his heart was going like mad under John’s hand on his neck. And McKay thought he was hot, he really thought John was hot.

Rodney pushed himself up a little, keeping his mouth on John’s, and reached down between them, slid his fingers under the waistband of John’s track pants, laughed into John’s mouth as he realized there were no underpants under the track pants. “Commando,” Rodney said.

“Well,” John answered, and despite himself, his voice had gone all hoarse and breathy, “I am one, right? Also it’s hard to do laundry on crutches.” He lost even the breath he had as Rodney’s hand closed around his cock, which was definitely in a state to appreciate it. “Jesus,” he wheezed, and shuddered up into Rodney’s grip.

“God damn,” Rodney said, and John had his hand up Rodney’s shirt, down the back of his pants, feeling skin, feeling hair— body hair, that was weird, a hairy belly against his. He couldn’t get the angle to touch Rodney’s dick. He didn’t know if he was ready for that. It was there, it was hot and hard against his hip, it felt kinda big, and John bit his lip and didn’t let himself be nervous. He knew how to handle a cock, he’d had one for thirty-something years and he’d gone to a boys’ boarding school, been in the military, spent most of his life surrounded primarily by other men. They weren’t tricky. He’d seen plenty.

“Shit,” John said, “yes,” and thrust up into Rodney’s hand as Rodney tightened his grip.

“I thought maybe you’d be too drunk for this,” Rodney said.

“Hell,” John said, breathing harder already, “I’m Irish, I can do anything drunk.” He struggled with the button on Rodney’s khakis. “Okay except maybe that.”

Rodney laughed, let go of John’s dick, and unfastened his own pants and shoved them down. John dimly heard him kick off his shoes and then he was nudging John’s knees apart, kneeling between them and pulling the track pants up and off his body, down his legs, discarding them awkwardly. John kicked his good leg helpfully even as he felt his body tense up. Rodney would want to fuck him now, and he really, really really, really didn’t know if he was up for that, even drunk as hell.

John chewed his lips and looked up at Rodney. Nicer body than he’d expected, burly and broad-shouldered, a little soft at the middle but smooth powerful lines like a sea lion or something. Thing was, he was very, very male, pale-skinned and hairy and with a big hard erection sticking straight out at John, darker than the rest of his skin and twitching a little with every beat of his heart. This was— it was weird, and John was a champion at not thinking about stuff but this was pushing even his limit.

“God,” Rodney said, eyes raking avidly up and down John’s body, “oh my God,” and he shoved backward down the bed and suddenly had John’s cock in his mouth. John jerked up against him with a muffled groan, astonished at the sudden wet tight suction.

Rodney set to work with his hands and his tongue and his mouth, and John swore and twisted his hands in the sheets. If he weren’t so drunk he would’ve already come; as it was, the alcohol-induced numbness would probably buy him another minute and a half or so. Shit, Rodney was good at this, and John reconsidered his assumption that it couldn’t at all be difficult. He had no idea. Fortunately, he was drunk enough that sloppy enthusiasm would probably carry him through when it was his turn.

Rodney did something incredibly clever with his tongue and John swore again and bucked up against him. Rodney grabbed John’s hips and swallowed him down, all the way, and John trembled and let his head fall back. “Oh,” he said, “oh God, oh God I’m close—“

Rodney pulled off and gave him a wicked grin, twisting his hand up the shaft, mouth obscenely wet and glistening red. John choked off a louder sound and shuddered hard, coming forcefully in Rodney’s hand, all over his own belly, making a mess.

He lay utterly limp, shocked with satiation, for a moment, gasping for breath. “Christ,” he managed after a little bit, blinking dazedly. Rodney ran one hand up and down John’s side, tracing the lines of his ribs, of his hipbone, down his hip to his thigh, almost absently. John hadn’t had an orgasm from anything but his own hand in a long time, and even that he hadn’t had much of— depression, then stress, then exhaustion, tended to make that sort of thing a lot more infrequent than (he privately worried, sometimes, when he let himself think about it) was typical.

“God, look at you,” Rodney said, shifting a little, and John became dimly aware that Rodney was jerking himself off with his spunk-slick hand. Rodney’s expression was almost awestruck as he stared at John.

John was used to people flirting with him and knew he was commonly held to be good-looking, but nobody had ever looked at him like this. Not even Nancy; she’d definitely found him hot but she’d never acted like just looking at him was enough. Not like this. He licked his lips, watching Rodney watch him, almost as drunk on the endorphins of orgasm as he was on the awful industrial solvent. “Let me,” he said, and Rodney moved up a little but didn’t stop moving his hand over himself.

“God, Sheppard,” Rodney said, and it was like was helpless, unable to stop or look away. John watched him, watched his cock pumping through his slick fist, precome already leaking from the head down the shaft, licked his lips and thought about sucking on that, swallowing it down. “Oh God. Sheppard, you’re so fucking hot.”

John shoved himself up on an elbow, crashing his mouth into Rodney’s with an awkward click of teeth, and grabbing blindly until he found Rodney’s cock, shoving his hand aside and jacking him hard and fast. “Yeah,” John said, “Jesus, McKay—“ The other man’s cock was hard and hot in his hand, slippery with John’s come and his own precome, and John bit Rodney’s lip. “C’mon,” John said, “give it to me, Rodney.”

Rodney made a choked noise into John’s mouth and shuddered hard against him, then groaned breathlessly as he came. Hot wetness spattered down John’s arm and across his chest and stomach. He had a moment’s distant thought that he should probably be grossed out, but instead he lay back and watched as Rodney humped against his hip and squirted everywhere.

“Agh,” Rodney said, shuddering hard, still coming, “shit, Jesus, Sheppard, oh.” He let his head fall against John’s shoulder, aftershocks shivering through him. “Oh shit. Oh shit, Sheppard.” He breathed heavily for a moment into John’s neck, and John lay still, catching his own breath.

“Yeah,” John said, his voice down to a whisper. Not gonna think about how weird this was, just gonna enjoy the novelty of having a warm body against him, the weird internal warmth of affection and endorphins and not being alone.

“Ugh,” Rodney said suddenly, raising his head, “that’s a mess.”

So much for afterglow. “Don’t care,” John said fuzzily.

Rodney sighed, and heaved himself up out of the bed. “Gotta clean up,” he said.

John mumbled incoherently, but couldn’t find words to ask him to stay, and in the sudden cold absence as his sweat— and the come all over him— started to cool, he felt a little twinge of weirdness creeping in around the edges of his not-thinking-about-it-ness. Rodney came back with a warm damp washcloth and sponged John off, and the weirdness faded at the still-awed look on McKay’s face. “God,” Rodney said, following with his eyes as he wiped a streak of come from the line at the edge of John’s hip, where the muscle cut in toward his groin, “you’re definitely the hottest living thing I’ve ever jizzed in or on.”

John had to laugh, at that. “You sure know how to make a guy feel special,” he said, and shivered pleasantly as Rodney rubbed the washcloth across his softened dick.

“I try,” Rodney said, quirking a half-grin at him as he stood up again. John thought about sitting up and finding the blankets, but his leg was throbbing and he really didn’t want to think about moving. After a few minutes Rodney came back and sat on the edge of the bed. “Sheppard, you better drink some more water,” he said.

“I’m gonna be sorry tomorrow anyway,” John said, but sat up on an elbow and took the proffered canteen anyway. It was freshly refilled with cold water and John drank deeply, knowing his hangovers were worse now as his thirties advanced. Rodney watched him, sort of absently, and John tried not to be self-conscious about it but failed. He wanted to suavely ask Rodney to stick around for the night but his bed was tiny and he knew he was going to be in screaming pain with this leg tomorrow morning. He laughed instead, looking down.

“You gonna get weird about this?” Rodney asked nervously.

John looked up. “No,” he said, “that’s not what I—“ He sat up the rest of the way, put his hand around the back of Rodney’s neck, and pulled him in and kissed him again. Rodney was tense a moment, but then opened his mouth and returned the kiss, and John set the canteen down on the floor and pulled Rodney down to him. “I’m gonna be hung-over as fuck and hurtin’ bad with this leg,” he murmured, licking at Rodney’s lower lip. “I definitely overdid it. But that’s all I meant.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. “Okay.” He propped himself on an elbow, body pressed warm along the length of John’s. He’d put his pants back on, but not his shirt, and he was hairy and solid and soft against John’s skin. He was still looking at John like he didn’t really believe he was there. “So you’re not gonna freak out about this?”

“No,” John said. He let himself run his fingers along Rodney’s collarbone. “No, I had a really good time tonight. Thanks for draggin’ me away from War and Peace.”

“Anytime,” Rodney said, and sat up. He shook out the blankets they’d kicked off the bed, tucked John in, set the canteen on the bedside table, and found John’s little bottle of painkillers and set it next to the canteen. “Well, sleep tight.”

John laughed, watching Rodney find his shirt on the floor and pull it on over his head before going out the door.

 

He didn’t see Rodney the next day at all. He did find his other crutch leaning against the wall outside his door in the morning, along with the omnibus bound edition of the first three books of the Harry Potter series. He laughed and left the book in his room as he went about his day. Even injured, there was a lot John had to do.

Elizabeth sat with him at lunch. “How are you?” she asked a little pointedly, looking him up and down. John chewed on his sandwich thoughtfully for a moment, and gave her a crooked grin when his mouth was no longer full.

“Better than I’ve any right to be,” he said. “McKay took good care of me.”

“You’re far more chipper than I’d expected,” Elizabeth said, picking daintily at her sandwich and indulging in some elaborate eyebrow choreography.

 _I got laid,_ John thought, but didn’t say. _I’m finally over being terrified of being a faggot._ He didn’t say that either. He especially didn’t say _I think I have the worst crush of my life on McKay._ That one wasn’t even safe to think. “I had fun,” he said. “I was kinda worried the scientists were all too mad at me to be civil, but most of ‘em seem to be on the page I’d hoped they’d get to.” He shrugged. “And I wasn’t all that drunk, I just— seriously, if you’d been there for the thing that started me laughing, you wouldn’t have been able to sit up either. Jesus it was hilarious.”

“Daddy Issues Bingo?” Elizabeth asked.

John shook his head. “That wasn’t even it,” he said. “Oh God. It’s that Kolesnikova— she can make anything into a drinking game. Hell of a wit. And the shit she and Zelenka and McKay were saying to each other in Russian…”

"Don’t you speak Russian?” Elizabeth regarded him over the edge of her coffee mug.

John nodded. “I do,” he said, “but none of them know that. Air Force didn’t train no fool.” He tapped the side of his head. “It was all I could do to keep a straight face for some of it. Their code name for me is hilarious.”

“Code name,” Elizabeth said.

“Well yeah,” John said. “To use my name would give it away. They call me…” He pondered how to translate it. “In Russian it alliterates so it’s funnier. Kinda translates to Captain Crazypants only it’s slightly more obscene, inexplicably.”

Elizabeth looked alarmed. “I worry what their nickname for me is,” she said.

John shrugged. “Didn’t come up,” he said. “I’ll tell you if I find out and it’s funny, though.” He shook his head. “Kolesnikova also called me something along the lines of Little Pouty Guy but I think that was just when I was drunk. I hope that was just when I was drunk. I really don’t need that one to stick.” He chewed meditatively for a moment before adding, “I don’t pout, do I?”

“Rarely,” Elizabeth assured him, which wasn’t really all that reassuring.

 

He caught a glimpse of Rodney in the morning, passed him coming out of the bathroom, clad in a ratty bathrobe and toweling his hair. “You done for the moment?” John asked, gesturing at the bathroom door with the hand holding War and Peace (since the other one was holding the single crutch he was down to using, somewhat against Beckett's advice). “I kinda need a little while in there but if you need more time, I can wait.” As a seasoned campaigner John knew the importance of coddling one’s digestive system when necessary, and one of the many pains in the ass (literally) about being injured was the toll inactivity and painkillers took on the innermost workings. He knew better than to try to rush through a morning’s constitutional. One of the perks of Atlantis’s sparse population was that you could usually find an out-of-the-way restroom if you needed to take your time, but with his leg in this condition he wasn’t about to go exploring.

Rodney nodded sympathetically. Not for nothing, but he was a pretty seasoned campaigner too. “I’m good,” he said, then caught sight of the book. “Did you get the book we left you?”

“Yeah,” John said, “but I’m rationing it out— I can’t cheat on War and Peace until I’m at a good stopping place. If I set it down mid-chapter I’ll never get back to it. And I’m the faithful sort, I finish what I start.” That wasn’t a dig. That wasn’t a dig. Christ, John wasn’t going to get passive-aggressive.

“Meyers was horrified you hadn’t read Harry Potter because of weight restrictions, so she agreed to give up her copy for a little while.” Rodney gestured nervously. “Ah, well, have at it, I gotta get,” and he hooked his thumb over his shoulder.

“Sure,” John said. “See ya around.”

He wasn’t letting himself feel hurt that Rodney was treating it like an awkward drunken hookup. He really, really, really wasn’t going to let himself feel hurt. Because it couldn’t have been anything more anyway. There was just no way. So he’d be best off following Rodney’s lead and pretending it never happened until he could push it away and not think about it anymore.

 

With tremendous relief John stuck the bookmark into War and Peace and put it down, turning to pick up the Harry Potter book instead. If this book had been loaned to him as a gesture of kindness, the least he could do was read and return it promptly. It wasn’t the only one, now; the omnibus edition of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had turned up along with a scrap of paper with a directory on the network and a password, which he recognized as the repository of ebooks Zelenka had mentioned in his and Kolesnikova’s shared horror that he was voluntarily exploring Russian literature. He really had to learn the other scientist’s name now, Hanks or Hayes, anthropologist or maybe linguist, who’d admitted to owning the Guide omnibus. But Harry Potter first. It was a kid’s book, for Chrissakes, and if he was an invalid; if he couldn’t burn through it in less than a week the scientists would think he was some kind of subliterate moron. But he knew he couldn’t just skim it. He’d have to get all the references. Jeez. It was like homework. But it was a pretty easy read, so he’d barely finished his (cold) cup of tea and was already three chapters in when the door chimed.

“It’s unlocked,” he said, not raising his voice much in an attempt to be genteel. He thought ‘open’ at it, and either it worked or the person at the door opened it.

It was Rodney. “Hey,” John said, lighting up despite himself, and set the book down.

Rodney came in and shut the door behind him. “Hey,” he said, grinning unevenly. “You’re reading it.”

“I figured I’ve got a better chance at not being hunted to extinction by the scientists if I at least have some basic grasp of their culture,” John said. “Not that I can bitch about people shooting their commanding officers, because pot, kettle.”

“Sumner would certainly never have had your sense of humor about it,” Rodney said. He came over and sat down in the chair by the bed, folding his hands in his lap a little nervously.

“I have a suspicion Sumner was a good dude,” John said. “And I had a pretty solid plan to just stay the hell out of his way.”

“He was kind of a dick,” Rodney said, “but then, again,” and he hooked a thumb at himself, “pot, kettle.”

John laughed, and maybe he was way too happy, but at least Rodney wasn’t avoiding him. He’d been not letting himself worry about that either, that the thing Rodney was apparently qualifying as a drunken hookup would make it too awkward for them to stay friends. “My reading material keeps piling up,” he said. “It’s like homework. But if I’m gonna make War and Peace last the whole mission, I gotta take it slow.”

“Zelenka said he was going to give you access to the ebooks he brought. He was laughing about how useless the Russian-language ones were gonna be, but I suddenly remembered reading in your qualifications that you do speak Russian.” Rodney gave John a keen look.

“Captain Crazypants, reporting for duty,” John answered, in his flawless Russian. His vocabulary was far from complete but he’d had the accent beaten out of him before a covert retrieval op there.

“Jesus Christ,” Rodney said, chagrined.

“Please don’t tell Kolesnikova or Zelenka,” John said. “Please. There is so much potential for fun and pranks here. Please tell me you didn’t tell them.”

“I didn’t,” Rodney said. “Yet.”

“Sweet,” John said. “Let’s see if Kolesnikova comes up with any better pet names for me.”

“She was calling you… something about pert buttocks,” McKay said. “I didn’t catch the whole thing. Zelenka had picked up on the little pouty guy one.”

“I hope that one doesn’t stick,” John said. This would be a good time for Rodney to flirt again if he was going to. Christ, John was such a girl. Next he’d be asking _didn’t it mean anything to you?_ Oh God. Instead John said, a little petulantly, “I don’t pout!”

“You do, sometimes,” McKay said. John scowled. “Don’t worry, it’s cute.”

“Cute,” John said. “That’s the aesthetic I’m going for.” There really wasn’t any way to bring up their torrid gay hookup and ask if Rodney wanted to do it again only maybe in an ongoing fashion. Shit, Rodney couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. But they were cut off from Earth, so, seriously, who was going to haul him up on that kind of code violation? John weighed his options, but there was nothing he could say without sounding like a teenage girl.

“Explains a lot,” Rodney said.

“Speaking of which,” John said, in a flash of inspiration, “about the other night, you and me…” He wrung his hands together, chewed his lips, giving Rodney an overwrought, indirect, pleading look. Rodney looked alarmed and uncomfortable. “I think— I don’t know— Rodney, can you get gay-pregnant from giving a handjob?”

“You ass,” Rodney squawked, and grabbed John’s pillow and socked him with it. John fended it off, howling with laughter, and rolled off the bed, wishing like anything for a water pistol. As it was, he realized immediately that standing up was a terrible idea. Rodney dropped the pillow in alarm. “Sheppard!”

“Oh,” John wheezed, still laughing, “I must’ve gotten dizzy. I think it’s my delicate condition.”

“You can’t get gay-pregnant from a handjob,” Rodney said. “That’s not even a thing.”

“I went to Catholic school, Rodney,” John said. “I don’t know how gay babies are made.”

“You’re an ass,” Rodney said, but kindly forbore from hitting him with the pillow.

“Seriously, though,” John said, “you can teach me about gay birth control, right? Because I’ve honestly never wanted to put my dick in a guy’s ass the way I do with yours.”

Rodney looked dumbstruck at that, and put the pillow down in his lap, blinking. “I uh,” he said, “I uh, um— Wow, my brain just rebooted. I don’t know if it’s ever done— uh, done that before. I uh—" He stuttered back to life, looked cross, and said, “Sheppard, quit messing with me.”

“I’m not,” John said. “I mean, not at the moment.” His mouth felt slow and stupid, the way it did whenever he wanted to say serious things, and he fumbled, eventually, “I kinda— I mean— I know it’s weird and we can’t, like, date or anything, but, um—" He squinted, scrunched up his face. “But you seemed kinda into— and I really, the idea is— I mean, maybe just as an occasional thing, kinda under the radar, just once in a while maybe— do you wanna, um, fuck?” Christ, could he have put any more subordinate half-clauses in there? That wasn’t even a sentence. But it was as vulnerable as he had the strength to make himself.

Rodney blinked at him and John squirmed uncomfortably, raising his eyebrows and making a face— shit, that was the puppy-dog face, not the come-hither face, was he begging now? He realized his eyebrows were doing their own ridiculous dance and schooled his face back to neutral as the silence went on.

“Or, you know, we can write it off as a crazy drunk one-time thing,” John said hastily when he decided Rodney had been silent too long. “I mean, whatever— it’s up to you. I just thought— you know, what with almost dying a lot, sometimes a man just wants to hang onto somebody a little bit sometimes.” That was better. It sounded more manly and less teenagey. Or did it?

“Are you seriously asking to fuck me?” Rodney asked. “Or are you fucking with me?”

“I’m, seriously,” John said, off-balance. “Wait, what? Or whatever— I mean, if you don’t— if you don’t do that— I meant generally, not specifically. I don’t— dicks in asses is just a, you know.”

“Oh my God,” Rodney said, “you’re serious.”

John wondered, inwardly writhing in an agony of embarrassment, if he could figure out a way to set himself on fire with his mind. There was probably an ATA-sensitive system nearby gone haywire and he could start a fire or maybe explode something. And then afterward claim that there had been hallucinogenic gas being released. That’d be great. _I have no memory of that conversation, McKay, are you sure you weren’t hallucinating too? I thought I was talking to a giant squid about canasta. Man you should get your head examined, that’s a weird thing to think I’d ever say._ Yeah, perfect.

He was so preoccupied with trying to start a fire with his mind that he didn’t at all expect McKay to get into the bed, to straddle him and push him down and kiss him, and he dropped his book and made an undignified almost-squeaking sound and nearly fell off the bed.

It was even better sober. McKay’s mouth was hot and wet, his tongue clever and aggressive. John let his head fall back against the pillow and opened up, surrendered to him. It was hot, it was really fuckin’ hot, which definitely made up for the fact that it was weird as fuck. Rodney was so big, so substantial, so male, his broad shoulders and big arms covering John easily. It both freaked John out and turned him on, and he was so hard so fast it made him dizzy.

“God,” Rodney said, grinding his erection into John’s hip and talking almost directly into his mouth, “oh God, you can fuck me if you want. That’s not what I was objecting to. I just couldn’t believe you were serious.”

John shoved his mouth up into Rodney’s, enjoying this new and novel way of shutting him up, and entertaining a momentary startlingly-hot fantasy of shutting him up at a senior staff meeting this way. It wasn’t something John would ever actually do; he hated public displays of affection even though they turned him on unreasonably. Hotter in theory and very occasional practice than as a habit. But just grabbing Rodney mid-rant and taking his mouth and maybe pinning him down on the conference table and— John twitched a little, turned on almost past bearing, and without any conscious input he blurted, “Fuck my mouth.”

“Jesus,” Rodney gasped, hips lurching against John’s, “I almost just came from you saying that.”

John laughed, wriggling against him, dizzy with arousal. “I want it, Rodney. I want you to put your cock in my mouth until you’re almost there and then I want to fuck your ass until you come everywhere. I want you to come until you can’t think. I wanna watch it.”

“Oh God,” Rodney said, a little wild-eyed. “Okay. Okay, I’m on board with this.”

John grinned. “Awesome,” he said. “I got other stuff I want to do but not with this leg.”

“Right,” Rodney said. “Okay. Right.”

John kissed him aggressively, holding his head and driving his tongue in deep, and Rodney pretty much melted for him, going pliant and letting his head rock back. God it was hot. He had a completely different set of urges than he did with women. Well, not completely; Nancy’d had a strap-on she’d used on him a few times, to astonishing (at the time) effect— mostly in his mouth— but the things John wanted now weren’t at all the same things he’d wanted then.

He broke off. “Strip,” he said roughly into Rodney’s ear. “C’mon.”

“Okay,” Rodney gasped. Liked being bossed around. Surprising. John grabbed the hem of Rodney’s shirt and tugged it up. Rodney rolled off him and shucked shoes, pants, boxers, and stood by the bed, cock hugely erect. His grubby white socks were not enough to spoil the effect. “You,” Rodney said, “you, uh—“ and gestured.

John pulled his shirt off over his head slowly, watching Rodney watching him. He grinned and slowly unbuttoned his pants, slowly slid them down over his hips. He had underwear on this time, wash-faded blue boxers; he left them on because they were nearly transparent anyway, and a little bit of mystery never hurt anything in bed. “C’mere,” he said, reaching out and taking Rodney’s hand.

Rodney settled obediently with his knees pretty much in John’s armpits, straddling John’s chest, and John propped himself up on the pillow and, with a moment’s hesitation to prepare himself, licked cautiously at the head of Rodney’s slightly intimidating erection. Jeez, it was right in his face, like— hey, he’d asked for this. _Give the hindbrain what it wants, John._

“Fuck,” Rodney whispered, “John, you’re— God, I’ll never need to watch porn again.”

John grinned, licked his palm, and closed it around the shaft of Rodney’s cock, opening his mouth to suck the head in. It was hot, even warmer than his tongue, and velvety, alive, slightly salty, similar to Nancy’s strap-on only in shape and different every other possible way. And Rodney’s responses were so immediate, so hard-wired. It was immensely gratifying. John tried a few things with his tongue, with his lips, and Rodney gasped and shivered and twitched, the long muscles of his thighs twitching and tensing and moving, his ass taut under John’s hands. John took him a little deeper, a little deeper, and it was so different to do this with real flesh than with unyielding silicone.

Translation of theory to practice was going so well that John moved to his next theory, which was trailing his fingers through all the drool which was starting to accumulate and sliding them down behind Rodney’s balls. Now these were different— he had no experience with balls besides his own, and the handling was obviously much different. This was the part where he’d always just kinda stuck his fingers in Nancy’s pussy and gone for the G-spot/clit two-way press to seal the deal. Obviously this was going to be different. Rodney squirmed and groaned a little as John carefully, carefully teased slippery fingers around his asshole. John raised a questioning eyebrow and Rodney, hands braced either side of John’s head, blinked at him for a second before moaning, “Yes,” and thrusting a little into John’s mouth.

“Mm,” John said, opening his jaw a little, and carefully, so carefully, pressed the tip of his index finger into Rodney. Rodney made enthusiastic noises and semi-uncontrolled little jerks of his hips, which was hot, and John slid in deeper, took his thick cock as far down his throat as he could manage. Holding his breath helped, rolling his eyes back a little helped and Rodney seemed to find it hot. It wasn’t long until he had a second finger in Rodney, and was carefully timing his breathing with Rodney’s faster, shakier hip jerks.

“God,” Rodney moaned, “oh God, oh God John, I, oh—"

John shoved his fingers up, deep into Rodney, and pulled his mouth off him at the same time, just escaping being choked by an involuntary, powerful thrust from Rodney’s hips. “You gonna last until I get inside you?” he asked hoarsely.

“Only if it’s now,” Rodney panted. “Oh God. You need to fuck me now. So hot, John. So fucking hot.”

John tongued at the head of Rodney’s cock, lightly, teasingly, and crooked his fingers. He knew assholes were pretty similar from female to male, so there was some good stuff right around here somewhere. Rodney’s hips stuttered and he moaned sharper, and John grinned. Yeah, right about there. “Now,” Rodney gasped. “Ah. God.”

The only reason he had lube and condoms was that Beckett had pressed them on him, solemnly and intently, at some rather recent point before an offworld mission. John hadn’t really known what was up with that at the time, and he honestly still didn’t, but he wasn’t mad, that was for sure. He’d stuck them in his nightstand, and he gestured at it a little distractedly with the hand that wasn’t knuckle-deep in Rodney.

“Top drawer,” he said.

“Okay,” Rodney said, and leaned over, and fumbled in the drawer. “Um.” He pulled out John’s sidearm.

“Not that,” John said. “Maybe if you wanna play a game later but it’s not my thing. Next to it.”

“Ah,” Rodney said, rummaging, and produced the little strip of foil packages, and the small tube. “Be prepared.”

“Always,” John said, and twisted his fingers, making Rodney gasp and jerk. He licked the head of Rodney’s dick one more time before pulling his fingers slowly out of Rodney’s ass.

Rodney shimmied down John’s body, kneeling awkwardly over him, and stared a moment at his boxers-clad pelvis. “Yeah,” Rodney said distractedly, “okay,” as if he was making a decision, and stuck his fingers in the waistband of the boxers, jerking them down. “Wow.” John was just about as hard as he’d ever been. But he had just enough self-possession to say, “Maybe take your socks off too,” as he worked his boxers down his legs and kicked them off his good foot.

“Ha,” Rodney said, “right,” and pulled them off awkwardly. It shouldn’t have been hot but it was.

“Fuck,” John said, “c’mere.”

Rodney straddled John’s thighs and ripped a condom packet open with his teeth. He opened the lube and slicked up John’s cock, then rolled the condom down and stroked him, hard, base to tip. John hissed, rolling his hips up into the contact. Rodney had his tongue between his teeth and flicked his gaze up to John’s face. “I’ve never done this before,” Rodney admitted, running his lubed fingers around his asshole.

“Really?” John asked, shoving himself up on an elbow.

“No,” Rodney said.

“I thought you were bi,” John said.

“I’m kind of… inexperienced at… a lot of things,” Rodney admitted.

“Well,” John said, “I’ve done this before, but not to a guy. Both theory and practice should be about the same.”

“Yeah,” Rodney said. “I, ah,” and he bit off the next words as he slid his fingers into himself. “Jesus I want you.”

“Not Jesus, buddy,” John said, “but c’mere and we’ll see what else I can get you to say.”

“Ha,” Rodney said, and moved forward. John let him do awkward shuffle of positioning, and bit his lip as Rodney settled against him. “Okay,” Rodney said, “okay,” and pushed down.

“Shit,” John said as he slid in, and let his head fall back against the pillows. Rodney’s hands settled on his shoulders, gripping tightly, and John wrapped his hands carefully, gently around Rodney’s hips. “Shit, Rodney. Yeah.”

Rodney groaned wordlessly as he sank with agonizing slowness along John’s length, letting his head roll back on his neck, eyes closing and face going tight, then slack. John bit his lip and stayed absolutely still, though his breath came fast.

“So hot,” he said hoarsely. “So tight. God, Rodney.”

“Yeah,” Rodney said shakily. John watched his own cock disappearing into the other man’s body, watched Rodney’s erection bobbing with his heartbeat. At last Rodney’s body was resting flat against John’s. A shudder went through Rodney’s body and John groaned, feeling it from the inside. “Oh God,” Rodney panted, leaning forward a little, staring blankly through John. “You’re— you’re inside my body.”

“I am,” John answered, staring up at him. His eyes were so, so incredibly blue, wide and blank, and his mouth hung slightly open, uneven, slanting. Rodney shuddered again, and moved against John, rolling his hips, and the sensation unfurled up John’s spine, up and out down his limbs to his fingers, curling them around Rodney’s hips, down to his toes, warm through his gut, uncoiling up the back of his neck and making his face go slack. He caught his breath and moved with Rodney, a little more intently, a little faster, and Rodney was moaning now, exquisite little breathless cries as they moved together.

“Oh fuck,” Rodney said, “oh, oh Sheppard, oh yes.” He moved harder, faster, shoving back against John and pulling up a little to shove himself down again. John wanted to intensify his movements too but the sharp ache in his thigh held him down, tamed him, and he let Rodney set the pace.

“Yeah,” he murmured, “Rodney.”

Rodney cried out a little sharper as he quite obviously found a good angle, and started shoving himself harder down against John. “Oh fuck,” he said, “oh fuck, yes, inside me, fuck, oh God!”

“C’mon,” John murmured, and licked his hand and wrapped it around Rodney’s cock, his enormously erect and leaking cock. “Ah, c’mon Rodney.”

“Ah,” Rodney said, “Jesus fuck, Sheppard, oh God, oh God, oh yes,” and he was fucking himself hard on John’s cock, shivering and tight and hot and perfect, and John’s hips were jerking without his conscious input. “Christ, Sheppard, yes, yes—“ Rodney bucked and shuddered, thrusting forward into John’s fist, backward onto his cock, his whole body twitching as he came, striping thick gobs of ejaculate across John’s belly and chest.

“Rodney,” John gasped, grabbing onto his hip hard and driving helplessly up into him. “Oh fuck, Rodney.” He gritted his teeth against whatever hideous noise was trying to explode from his throat and instead made incoherent grunting noises as his whole body seemed to turn itself inside out deep into Rodney’s body.

“Oh,” Rodney sighed, sounding deeply satisfied, muscles gone lax and head drooping down toward John’s, “oh yes, oh… Sheppard, yes.”

John raised shaking hands to Rodney’s shoulders and pulled him down, catching his mouth for a breathless, brief kiss. He was trembling, floating and blissed-out on endorphins, and the distant clawing pain of his leg was insignificant. Rodney kissed him back, slow and shallow and lingering. It was incredibly sweet, and John was disconcertingly racked with an overwhelming impulse toward tenderness, to gather Rodney to him and murmur sweet things and pet him and generally behave in completely ridiculous ways.

He took a breath and gathered himself fuzzily, looking up into the bluest, bluest eyes, hazy with bliss. Something behind his ribs twisted and he had to obey the impulse to cradle Rodney’s square jaw in his hand, rub a thumb gently across one high cheekbone. “Hey,” he murmured.

Rodney shivered. “Jesus,” he said drowsily, “Sheppard, I can still feel your pulse in my ass.”

“Heh,” John said, and bit his lip, finding the base of the condom. He knew better than to pull out fast.

“Oh weird,” Rodney said, eyes going wide.

“I’m takin’ it slow,” John said, “relax and don’t clench.”

“Weird,” Rodney said again, voice higher. “It— oh _weird_.”

“You’re okay,” John said.

“I feel like a tube sock being turned inside out,” Rodney said, voice still a bit high. “Or like, or like I’m— oh jeez.”

“It’s okay,” John said. “You’re not makin’ a mess. It’s okay. C’mere.”

Rodney laughed, too sex-mellowed to stay uptight. “It’s not like you could be a whole lot more of a mess than you already are,” he said, and shivered as he drew a finger through one of the streaks of come on John’s belly. “Holy shit, look how far I shot.”

“You almost got my face,” John said. “Pretty impressive, Rodney.”

Rodney blinked one more time as John finally slipped free. “Uh,” he said.

John grabbed his t-shirt from the floor. “Guess I gotta do laundry,” he said, and swiped at the mess on his chest.

“Ugh,” Rodney said, shivering once more. John must have made a concerned face, because he grinned suddenly, satisfiedly. “Shower. I want a shower.”

John grinned back lopsidedly. “We could share,” he said. “If, er, if you don’t mind helping my gimpy ass.”

“Hey,” Rodney said, “yeah, that’d, yeah.” He collapsed slowly sideways, careful of John’s bad leg, and stretched out next to John in the impossibly narrow bed. John caught an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in, pressing their somewhat-sticky bodies together. “Gimme a minute, I need to get my strength back.”

John laughed. “Yeah,” he said. His heart had slowed, and he could feel himself sliding off toward sleep.

“Nononono,” Rodney said, “don’t pass out on me, Sheppard.”

“Heh,” John said, and turned his head to catch Rodney’s mouth again. “Nah. Man, that was awesome.”

“Yeah.”

Showering wasn’t as awkward as John had thought it might be; Rodney pressed him playfully against the wall and washed his back for him, and was gratifyingly horrified at the raw tender pink flesh of his newly-closed wound.

“Oh my God,” Rodney said, tracing gingerly at the edge of the exit wound in back.

“Yeah,” John said, letting water drip down his nose. “Kinda took out a chunk. Beckett did a hell of a job putting it all back together. It’s pretty amazing I didn’t bleed out though.”

“I should mention how incredibly badass you sounded about the whole thing,” Rodney said.

John laughed. “I kind of go off into a different place in a crisis,” he said. Rodney kissed his neck and helped him turn around, settling his shoulder against the warm tile.

Rodney ran a speculative finger down the long thick old scar on the front of John’s thigh. "This part’s a lot more healed,” he said.

“That’s an old scar,” John said.

“Really?” Rodney bent to examine it.

“Had to have a rod put in to stabilize the bone,” John said. “Broke it when I got thrown out of a helicopter.”

Rodney blinked at him, at such close range John had to put out a hand and wipe his thumb across that lower lip. “Who threw you out?” Rodney asked.

“Gravity,” John said. “Got shot down, and thrown clear in the landing.” He shrugged. “Saved my life, everyone else burned to death. I’d already been shot twice but I was still conscious.” He grimaced. “You know what, I don’t really wanna relive that one.”

“Can’t blame you,” Rodney said. John shuddered, remembering the screams of his crew, blood on the instrument panel, blood in his eyes, and pulled Rodney’s face closer to drown it out, taking his mouth gently.

Rodney leaned against him as he leaned back against the warm wet tile of the wall, enjoying the sensation of the hot water and Rodney’s water-slick body, shorter and broader and sleeker than his own, powerful and sturdy. “‘Sweird,” John mumbled, hands bracketing Rodney’s jaw, fingers by his cheekbones and thumbs by the corners of his mouth, the edges of his palms and his little fingers resting against Rodney’s neck, brushing the junctions of his collarbones.

“What’s weird?” Rodney asked.

“Liking this,” John said. “Liking you. I didn’t expect…” He looked up from Rodney’s mouth to his eyes, and Rodney was regarding him quizzically, a little warily. “Kinda figured by this point of my life I was done with the real big surprises. Like, y’know, liking cock.”

“There’s more to me than my fabulous erection,” Rodney said, grinning.

“I know,” John said, and for a strange gut-twisting moment he wanted to say something crazy, wanted to profess unfeasible devotion, and it was weird echoes of Nancy on the Ferris wheel with the antique diamond ring he’d missed a car payment scrounging for, only it was a bitchy astrophysicist in a shower in another galaxy and it was also a terrible, stupid idea. So instead John leaned in and murmured, “For one, you have an amazing ass.”

“I know I do,” Rodney said, smug. “You’re not the first to notice.”

“That’s not what you said while I was inside it,” John said.

“Ah,” Rodney said, and shivered a little, happily, “you were the first to experience it firsthand from that perspective, yes, but not the first to notice.”

“Did you think I was talking about what it looks like?” John murmured, playfully nuzzling at Rodney’s neck just under his ear, licking at the warm water flowing there. “I was talking about its inner beauty just as much as its outer appearance.”

Rodney laughed ticklishly. “You dick,” he said.

“I’m serious,” John said, mock-wounded. “I’m starting a fan club.” He ran his tongue along the edge of Rodney’s jaw, so delicately as to avoid being abraded by the stubble there— weird, said the one little detached part of his brain that was still convinced he was completely straight (and _boy_ , it had missed some stuff over the years, now that he thought back on it)— and then sucked just a little bit on the tendon of Rodney’s neck, not enough to leave a mark but enough to suggest it.

“If you give me a hickey I’m giving you one on your _forehead_ ,” Rodney said peevishly, though he didn’t pull away.

“Yeah that’d be a bad plan,” John said, nuzzling regretfully and pulling away with one last, lingering lick.

“We kinda have to be, uh,” Rodney said against John’s hair, “uh, kinda discreet, huh?”

“Yeah,” John sighed. “You know how gossip gets around places like this. And I mean, who’s gonna haul me up on charges out here? But if we ever make contact with Earth again—“

“Of course we will,” Rodney said, a little brittle-sounding, and John made a note, McKay’s scareder about this than he lets on, and mentally upped his estimation of Rodney’s bravery yet one more notch.

“Then all it takes is one innocent comment in hearing range of the eighty bajillion people who want me out of the Air Force, and I’m toast,” John said. “So, yeah, discreet is probably good.”

“But not so discreet as to, y’know, not do this,” Rodney said a little hopefully.

“Nahh,” John said, but he was too afraid to look at Rodney’s face, afraid he’d show how badly he wanted this. He was afraid even to let himself feel how badly he wanted this. Not the sex— he wasn’t so old that it didn’t matter, but he wasn’t so young as to obsess about it anymore— but the companionship. Someone to touch him, someone to care about his scars, someone whose mouth knew the taste of him.

It’d be nice, he concluded, if this worked out, and said, “My fingers are getting pruney.”

“Yeah,” Rodney said, and sighed. “I should… I was running some simulations and said I’d be back to check on them tonight. I should go do that.”

John thought the water off, and braced himself carefully against the wall, shaking wet hair out of his face. “I gotta finish Harry Potter fast enough that what’s-her-name doesn’t think I’m subliterate,” he said.

Rodney laughed. “Good goal. Hey, give me your laundry, I gotta do mine later and I’ll do yours too.”

“You don’t have to do that,” John said, disproportionately pleased.

“Well,” Rodney said a little shyly, “I keep adding to your laundry pile,” and he gave John a truly wickedly filthy look as he wrapped the towel around himself.

John bit his lip and laughed. “That you do,” he said. “Well, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Just leave me a duffel by your door, I’ll grab it when I go down later.” Rodney handed John a towel and paused, blinking at something above John’s eyebrows.

“What?” John asked self-consciously.

“Your hair is already standing up,” Rodney said, and reached carefully out to tousle the wet mop of it.

“It does that,” John said. “I told you. You’ve seen the bare hair products shelf for yourself. And provided photographic evidence to the masses, and collected on all the bets.”

“That I have,” Rodney said, and watched it. John could feel a couple of the cowlicks prickling as they shed enough water weight to spring upward. “But I’ve never actually watched it happen in realtime.” He shook his head, and retrieved John’s crutch from by the door. “Here, I gotta get going. You’re okay on your own, right?”

“Oh,” John said, “yeah, I’m fine,” and he made his way back to his room and let himself bask, just for a little while, in the unaccustomed warmth in his midsection.

 


	7. Superpowers of Snuggling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just after _The Eye_ , John learns many things about Rodney, and also discovers the cure for insomnia.

The shakes hit before John could make it to his quarters, and he leaned against the wall and kept his breathing even and deep, trying not to throw up. He was exhausted, and the adrenaline comedown was brutal. He tipped his head back and breathed, breathed, and finally gave in and let himself slide down the wall when his legs wouldn’t hold him. He was gonna have to ride this out here for a minute and hope nobody came down this hallway. 

He’d been fine but he’d found an electrocuted Genii corpse, someone who hadn’t made it out of the hallways before the electrical buildup, and the smell had followed him all the way back here because he’d been dumb enough to drag the guy out and throw him off a balcony himself. Now he reeked of burned flesh and he couldn’t avoid thinking about the several dozen human lives he’d taken over the last day or so, and it wasn’t going to let itself be shoved back down behind his ribs where those things lived most of the time while he avoided thinking about them.

He scrubbed his hands through his hair and let his mind go as blank as he could manage, shaking and shuddering, and finally he shoved up to his hands and knees and puked. There was nothing in his stomach, nothing to bring up but a little bit of bitter, bitter acid, and some of the water he’d sucked down during the post-mission briefing, such as it had been. 

Finally he crawled back away from the mess a little way and propped himself back against the wall, fishing the mostly-empty bottle of water out of his thigh pocket and swishing it around his mouth. He was still shaking hard, but he needed to get under a shower, get this smell off him. He shoved himself unsteadily to his feet and limped down the hallway, leaning heavily on the wall. 

“Major,” a voice said. He startled a little and turned to blink at whoever it was, praying wordlessly for a friendly face. People were starting to come back from Manaria and he really didn’t feel up to facing someone who’d want him to tell the goddamn story again. 

“McKay,” he said, tension going out of his shoulders. 

Rodney frowned. “You look awful,” he said. “I thought you weren’t injured.” 

“I’m not,” John said. “‘Mfine.” He wiped at his mouth and Rodney fell into step beside him. John considered reaching out and touching Rodney. Surely their relationship, such as it was, could extend to that kind of comfort. But the reek of burning and the buzzing of every nerve ending told him he most likely couldn’t really handle a hug right now. 

“Headed back to your quarters?” Rodney asked. 

“Yeah,” John said. “Hope there’s enough power for an hour-long searing-hot shower.” He rubbed at the gritty back of his neck. “I’m fucking bushed and I reek of burnt corpse.”

McKay shot him a look. “Why?” he asked. 

“Found one who didn’t make it out of the halls in time,” John said, gesturing ineffectually. 

McKay flinched. “Oh,” he said. 

“Genii,” John said. “Might’ve already been dead, who knows?”

“Ugh,” McKay said. “Still.”

John’s knees gave out for a second and he caught himself on the wall. “Whoa,” McKay said, “Sheppard, you okay?”

“Told you,” John said, pushing himself back up and taking another tentative step, “exhausted.”

“You’re shaking,” Rodney said, and caught at his arm. 

“And you’re bleeding,” John answered, frowning at the ridiculous bandage wrapped over the ripped sleeve of Rodney’s jacket. Fresh blood was visible, coming through the bandage, soaking along the fabric. “Did you get that looked at?”

“No,” Rodney said, pulling away. “Beckett’s concussed. I, it’s probably fine.”

“Lemme take a look at it,” John said. They were in the little cul-de-sac that both of their quarters, the still-spare room, and the bathroom opened out onto. 

“You’re not a doctor,” Rodney said, something about him folding in on himself, his shoulders hunching. 

John stopped, leaning against the wall. “McKay,” he said softly. “I flew medevacs for years. I know first aid pretty damn well. They don’t teach the finer points of surgery in Special Forces training, no, but I’m good up to and including putting in stitches. Let me at least clean you up and redo that bandage right.”

“It’s fine,” Rodney said. John stared at him until he broke. “Okay. Jeez.”

John swiped the bathroom door open and stumbled wearily in. Rodney trailed him reluctantly, keeping a careful distance as though… as though he were afraid of John. John leaned against the counter and raised an eyebrow at him. 

“I didn’t know you were Special Forces,” Rodney said uncomfortably. 

“Eh,” John said, tired now beyond bearing. “Air Force. It’s not like I’m some kind of Green Beret nutjob.” He rubbed the back of his neck again. “Anyway, not anymore. They dropped me like a hot potato after the shit I pulled in Afghanistan. Banished me to regular service and McMurdo. I just used to do covert ops stuff, back when I was younger and even dumber.” He turned the water on to let it get hot, really hot, and splashed his face with the tepid stuff that first came out, then pressed his fingers into his eye sockets and rubbed for a little bit.

“You’re still shaking,” Rodney commented quietly. 

“Adrenaline comedown,” John said. He didn’t like how afraid Rodney looked of him. It made him feel colder and sicker than he already did. “Happens after,” and he waved a hand, “this kind of shit.”

“You’re kind of a badass,” Rodney said finally. “You killed, like… three dozen people.”

“More than that,” John said, then swallowed hard, squinting against the nausea. “Yeah,” he said tightly, “don’t, right now, I really need to not think about—“ He swallowed hard again. “God fucking damn it,” he said, and stumbled to the toilet/recycler thing, and puked up the little bit of water he’d gotten down since the last bout of vomiting. He dry-heaved, then, a couple of times, and sat heavily on the floor, wiping his mouth. 

“Are you all right?” Rodney asked, hovering anxiously. 

“Christ,” John hissed, and dragged himself back up to wash his face and rinse out his mouth. “Can we not, can we not talk about… Christ,” he said again, and rubbed his damp face dry with his towel. It needed a wash. “Stop looking at me like that, Rodney. Come here and let me look at your arm.” 

“Okay,” Rodney said, the meekest John had ever heard him. John perched his hip on the counter and took Rodney’s arm carefully, working out the neatly-tucked tail of the bandage. 

“Why didn’t you take your jacket off?” John asked, as mildly as he could manage. 

“It,” Rodney said, and twitched, “it was…” He trailed off into a mumble. “I couldn’t look at it.”

John nodded slowly. “Gotcha,” he said. “Well, it’s probably stuck now, so—“

“Know what,” Rodney said, tense, “it’s probably fine, I’ll just get it looked at later.”

John breathed slowly in, then out. “McKay,” he said. 

“It’s nothing,” Rodney said, squirming, but John didn’t let go of his wrist, and he subsided in a moment. Finally he said, “You’ll probably laugh at me. I couldn’t make myself look at it. I don’t even know how bad it is. And I spilled my guts like a mewling little baby.”

John let his breath out, and said gently, “Rodney.”

“You’re a crazy badass,” Rodney said, really upset now, shrill and shaking. “I’m the kind of guy your kind of guy used to stuff into lockers. I’m not trained for this, I’m not good at thi—”

“You’re _fine_ at this,” John said, cutting him off. “Rodney! I’m not going to mock you.” He wasn’t up to explaining that his high school hadn’t had lockers but if it had, he’d’ve spent a great deal of time unwillingly in them. What they’d done to him instead had been worse, until he’d gotten fast enough and canny enough to avoid being cornered or caught. “What kind of an asshole do you think I am?”

“You make fun of me all the time,” Rodney said, drawing himself up a little. 

John shook his head. “Not when it matters,” he said. “I’ve broken under torture. I fucking know. It doesn’t matter what they actually do to you, it matters what they could do to you. It doesn’t even matter if they didn’t break the skin, I’m not going to say a damn word.”

“Ha,” Rodney said, bitter, shrill, “I bet you’re lying. You’ve never broken under torture. You’re going to tell everyone what a wuss I am.”

John held up his hands, palm out. “McKay,” he said. “ _Rodney_. You just watched me try to puke up my shoes. I’m not gonna say a damn word. So give me your fucking arm so I can get that jacket off before the skin sticks to it and you hurt yourself worse.”

Rodney stared at him for a long moment, mouth tightly crooked. John gazed steadily back until Rodney’s vulnerability hurt too much to look at. On an impulse, John lurched forward, hesitated a moment, then fitted his hands carefully, gently around the edges of Rodney’s face, moving slowly. “Rodney,” he murmured, barely a breath as he stepped closer, closing his eyes and simply feeling the warmth of the other man’s body, his jaw, his neck, his cheeks, radiating life through John’s cold fingers. “I won’t hurt you.” 

They’d never done this, never touched except in either pragmatism or sexual intent. John cradled Rodney’s face between his hands until some of the tension went out of the other man, then pulled him closer and kissed him, softly. 

After a moment John pulled away with a soft huff of a laugh. “I probably taste like puke,” he said. “Sorry.”

Rodney shook his head mutely, then held out his arm. John looked at it for a second before he got his mind back in gear and took it carefully in both hands, settling his hip back on the counter to steady his shaky knees. He picked delicately at the bandage, unwinding it until the clotted blood began to stick. Then he turned the water on, as hot as it would go, soaked a washcloth in it, and put it against the stuck bandage. 

“Sorry,” Rodney said in a moment, as they waited for the bandage to loosen. “I didn’t mean to, to flip out on you.”

“Don’t be sorry,” John said. “It’s not like I can blame you.” He gently peeled back the washcloth and the bandage until Rodney hissed a little, then re-wetted the cloth and held it over the bandage again. Blood was welling. It was good they shared a bathroom; John had a beautifully organized and well-stocked first aid kit, and he knew he kept the bathroom a lot cleaner than Rodney would have. He had to; he did an awful lot of his own aftercare for all kinds of injuries, because he didn’t like to go back to the infirmary for follow-ups if he didn’t have to. He spent enough time there as it was. 

He hooked the first aid kit box out from under the counter with his foot and lifted it up onto the counter next to himself, opened it and surveyed his options. There was plenty of disinfectant left, and yes, there was his suture kit, there were some gloves, there were the forceps. 

“Sorry,” he said, “this will sting. No way around it.”

Rodney nodded. “It’s okay,” he said. 

Over the years John had dealt with a lot of guys at or near the end of their rope, who’d been through as much as or more than they could handle. He knew the look. Rodney’d had the look, a moment ago, but now he was back a little from the edge, and he’d probably be able to get through this. It was a good recovery, a fast one. Rodney was braver than he looked, a hell of a lot more resilient than he let on. 

John loved him for it, but processing that realization was going to take a lot more emotional reserves than he had left at that moment, so he firmly pushed the thought aside and peeled the bandage off the rest of the way with a resolute but careful gesture. Rodney yelped, and the blood started flowing again. 

“Get the jacket off,” John said, a little urgently, and helped him peel the damaged fabric away. The jacket hit the floor with a wet splat, and John held Rodney’s arm under the hot water. 

“Ow ow ow ow ow,” Rodney howled miserably. 

“This is not ‘nothing’, Rodney,” John said quietly, grimly, patting the wound dry with a handful of toilet paper— the washcloth was probably full of germs, and he didn’t have a clean one handy. The wound was shallow but gaped wide, as if some skin had been torn off. It was jagged and long and had certainly been inflicted slowly and with great drama. “How goddamn long did you hold out?”

“Not long,” Rodney said. John glanced up into his face for a moment, and raised an eyebrow. “I mean,” Rodney conceded, “it felt like forever, but I know it can’t have been.”

“This is a mess,” John said, and looked down, away, finding the bottle of disinfectant. “I’m sorry, this is really gonna sting. I’ll do it fast. Just, perch your butt on the counter right here and don’t move.”

Rodney obeyed, and John gritted his teeth and sluiced disinfectant across the wound. Rodney yelped terribly and flailed a bit, but didn’t move his arm too much. John carefully prodded at the edges of the wound. He could draw it closed a bit, maybe keep it from sloughing more skin. Eventually Rodney stopped yowling. 

“This probably ought to be stitched,” John said softly. “I can do it, if you like, or I could just wrap this up and you can go down to the infirmary and see if anyone there will do it. Tonight or tomorrow. It’s just, with stitches, the sooner you do them, the better off you are.” 

“You really know how to put in stitches,” Rodney said. 

“Yes,” John said. He’d learned on horses. He wasn’t going to say that. He pulled out a little box and set it on the counter. “There’s my suture kit.” He examined Rodney’s arm a little closer. “This is serious, but not deep. It doesn’t look to have affected any tendon or muscle. They weren’t looking to disable you. Which is good.” He had to swallow a sick flare of anger, dulled by his exhaustion; if he hadn’t already shot Kolya it would’ve been unbearable. “I hope I killed that fucking prick,” he let himself go on. 

“I hope so too,” Rodney said, and John could feel that either Rodney was shaking or he was. No, it was Rodney this time. 

“You’re gonna be fine,” John said, making himself be calm. “I know your shots are up to date. You want a couple stitches, or you just want me to clean this up and bandage it good?”

“Just bandages,” Rodney said quietly. 

“It’ll scar less if it’s stitched promptly,” John said. “It won’t take me long, I’m pretty quick at it.” 

Rodney stared worriedly at him. “All right,” he said, and John found a pair of rubber gloves, washed and disinfected his needle and forceps, and pulled the little plastic baggie of suture thread out of the kit. 

It was a few moments’ work to put five neat stitches down the length of the cut. “Beckett can re-do these nicer tomorrow,” John said, “maybe use finer threads, or put in a few more. But this might at least make the scar narrower and a little less jagged. They obviously cut you slow, it’s not a quick slice.” 

Rodney nodded silently, and John unwrapped a gauze pad, pressed it into place over the wound, and wrapped a strip of bandage over the top, peeling off his gloves as he worked so that he wouldn’t get blood on the outer parts of the bandage. “There,” John said finally, and patted Rodney on the shoulder. 

“Thanks,” Rodney said.

John fished out the bottle of ibuprofen he kept full, and shook out a couple pills for Rodney. “Beckett’ll probably give you something stronger,” he said, “and some antibiotics and whatnot, tomorrow. This is what I got, for now.”

“Thanks,” Rodney said again, taking them obediently, and swallowing them with water from the tumbler by the sink. John slid his weight carefully off the counter and tried to stand, but staggered into the wall. 

“Whoops,” John said, dizzy, holding himself up. 

“I thought you were all right,” Rodney said, alarmed, and his hands were on John, his good arm wrapping around John’s waist, his body warm and welcome. John leaned against him a moment, closing his eyes; he was so tired now his vision was jerking slightly side to side like a bad picture on a TV broadcast, and having something solid but alive to lean against was incalculably comforting. 

“I’m crashing,” John said. So much for that shower, he’d never stay awake long enough. God it felt good to have Rodney’s arms around him. He was so tired he was freezing, sick and shaky. Shit, he was at the end of his own rope, and nowhere near as resilient as Rodney. 

“Like a blood sugar crash?” Rodney asked anxiously, holding him up and steering him toward the door. John stumbled where he was pointed, and they made their way toward his bedroom. 

“No,” John said blurrily, “adrenaline. Was a long day.” He breathed in, breathed out, and let himself down carefully onto his bed. Rodney hovered, worried. 

“At least take your shoes off,” Rodney said, and bent to help him. John unzipped and shed his tac vest, pushing it onto the floor with uncharacteristic lack of concern. He’d clean up tomorrow, there was no way he could tonight. He stripped off his sweat-stiffened, still-damp uniform jacket, yanked his t-shirt off over his head, and helped as Rodney eased his shoes off. He shed the stinky socks underneath, unfastened his belt, and fumbled at the thigh holster. 

“I got it,” Rodney said, and set to work on the buckle. He was kneeling on the floor, and as he unbuckled the holster, John looked down at him. His brain stuttered, trying to tell him something, then gave up, but not before it kicked a syllable to his speech centers, and he said, 

“Huh.”

Rodney looked up, blinked, then laughed. “Should we bookmark this for later?” he asked, freeing John’s thigh from the strap and sliding his hand up for just a moment, stroking up John’s inner thigh. 

“Mm,” John said, trying to move his eyebrows. Yeah. No. There was no way he was in any condition to even think this through. He put a hand on Rodney’s shoulder and stroked absently at the side of his neck with his thumb. “Yeah.”

Rodney gave him a crooked smile, and moved his hands up to unfasten John’s equipment belt, then the belt under it that held his pants up. He pulled both free of John’s body, then unfastened his pants and stood to pull them off. John lay down as he tugged, letting Rodney dump him out of his pants. 

Rodney pulled the blankets out and rolled John into bed, then stood for a moment. John curled in on himself, already starting to sink into sleep, but held a hand out. “C’mere,” he said to Rodney. “Stay.” 

“Yeah?” Rodney sounded pleased. John caught his hand and pulled it down, and Rodney sat on the edge of the bed, huffed a laugh, and bent to untie his shoes. 

John was asleep before he was done, but as he sank down deeper into sleep he felt Rodney curl around his back, warm and solid and comforting. 

 

 

“Johnny,” his mother murmured, her hand playing gently with his hair. He had fallen asleep in her lap, curled and warm and safe, and she was holding him in her arms. “John, wake up.”

Her voice was shifting as he came closer to wakefulness, and John frowned, feeling fingers move in his hair, realizing gradually that it wasn’t his mother, it didn’t smell like her, he wasn’t a child, she’d been dead twenty years or more. He blinked awake, and the face looking at him with an expression of soft indulgence was Elizabeth’s. 

He sucked in a breath, blinked sleep away— whose hand was in his hair? Whose body was curled so comfortably around his? Why was Elizabeth here? He was in his bed, he was wearing only underwear, and that was Rodney curled around him, playing with his hair, Elizabeth sitting hunched in the chair by the bed with her chin in her hand, her elbow on her knee, bent nearly double, looking tired and puffy-faced. 

“Good morning, John,” she said. 

“Whzzmb,” he said, discovering that his brain and mouth hadn’t established any kind of connection. 

“You weren’t answering your radio,” she said, “so I stopped by to make sure you were all right, and found Rodney too.”

“Hmmgr,” John said, trying to remember why Rodney was in his bed, trying to remember what the hell was going on, and thinking that maybe he should freak out that she’d found them in bed together. But he was derailed a bit by how exhausted she looked, and how good Rodney’s hand still felt in his hair. 

“I was telling Elizabeth that she should’ve come down here,” Rodney said. 

“I didn’t sleep at all,” she said ruefully. “Hardly, anyway. I was so wound-up.”

“Mm,” John said, rubbing at his face. “I don’ remember gettin’ in bed. Wha’r you doin’ here, M’kay?”

“You asked me to stay,” Rodney said, “so I did. You haven’t moved since you lay down.”

“Time ‘zit,” John said, feeling around to see if he had his watch on. He did, and looked at it. The math to figure out what time it was here was entirely beyond him. “Um.”

“Morning,” Elizabeth said. “Still fairly early. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me you’d be asleep. I gave up on sleep around six and panicked when I couldn’t raise you on the radio, or McKay.”

“Mm,” John said. He blinked again, rubbed his face, yawned. “I found the cure for insomnia.”

“Kill a bunch of dudes?” Rodney guessed. 

“No,” John said, and yawned again, fit to split his jaw. “You. McKay’s the _best_ snuggler, Elizabeth. You want a good night’s sleep, you get him to spoon you. Be the little spoon, it’s totally worth it.” He stretched, yawning yet again. 

Rodney laughed. “I do like to be the big spoon,” he said. 

John regretfully wriggled free and sat up. He was usually far more modest than this, and noticed Elizabeth trying not to stare at his bare torso. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “You want in on this? Take over, I’m gonna go shower, because I smell fucking terrible.”

Elizabeth laughed. “I’m not going to spoon with my chief science officer in my military commander’s bed,” she said. 

“Why not?” John asked, making sure his fly wasn’t gaping before he slid out of bed, since his crotch was going to be at her eye level. “It’s nice and warm. And I’m serious, be the little spoon, you’ll get the best sleep of your life.” He scratched his back, stretched his shoulders, turned so he wouldn’t see her looking at him. It was fine by him if she wanted to, he just didn’t need the awkward dance of whether to notice or not. He was dumb enough to seduce his chief science officer, but not dumb enough to two-time said science officer with the head of the expedition. No way. 

Elizabeth laughed again. “I couldn’t do that,” she said, but she was hoarse with exhaustion. 

“Get in there,” John said. Rodney held up a corner of the blanket, both inviting her and showing her he was nearly fully clothed. “He doesn’t have cooties. Me, I’m gonna go scrub my skin off.”

He ambled to the door, stretching his back as he went, and didn’t look back. 

The shower was, indeed, awesome, and he used every single jet, most of them simultaneously, trying to blast away the foul smells of yesterday’s carnage. He was still a little shaky, and suddenly the memory came back to him of one of the Genii, the quickest of the bunch in that smoky room, who’d flinched away and caught a bullet in the lung instead of the head; John had dropped from the ceiling and finished him immediately with his knife and it had been his only non-instant kill, but the man had stared at him as he bled out, looking about seventeen and choking on his own blood. 

John dropped to his knees and dry-heaved for a couple of minutes; watching a victim die like that always brought the rest of them back, and he was seeing the Afghan kid with his beseeching gray eyes and the blood coming from his nose, he was seeing the splattered gray matter from the first guy he shot in the face, the screams from the gut-shot guy in Korea, all of them came back, some clutching helplessly at him, some gurgling, some falling without a sound, and John dry-heaved again, and again, and remembered the worst part, the parts when his blood was up and he’d liked it. 

That was the shit you never told anybody about. That was the shit you never even admitted to yourself, the almost sexual satisfaction, that warmth low in the belly and spreading in thick black satisfaction through your whole limbic system as you reduced a threatening enemy to just so much quivering meat. John retched again, and again, and rested his forehead against the warm tile wall for a long time until the tension went out of his neck and he could drag himself back up to his feet. 

 _One of these days,_ John thought, hands on the wall, forehead resting against his crossed forearms, _one of these days I’m going to lose my shit,_ and he considered it a moment, and it came to him with quiet clarity that the eventual breakdown wasn’t going to end in a therapist’s office. No, it was likely to go the way of most of the guys he knew who’d lost it, and wind up with him eating a bullet. _I don’t want to do that,_ he thought, but then he considered his options. He couldn’t live indefinitely with the things he’d done by just not thinking about them. Eventually they were going to be too much, especially if he kept on this way. His choices were to die in action or die by losing his shit. His odds of making it to die of old age were pretty fucking slim. 

 _As long as I don’t wind up a cripple,_ he thought, and with that he thought the water off and stood, pressing his fingertips into his eye sockets, letting the water drip off him for a long moment. Maybe he’d be lucky. Maybe he’d go by slamming into the gate shield, like all those people he’d killed yesterday. It couldn’t hurt at all, since it happened while you were dematerialized. 

Not that eating a bullet hurt at all. It just didn’t leave a very pretty corpse. 

John stepped out of the shower and found his towel, avoiding Rodney’s blood-soaked and wet jacket on the floor. He scrubbed at his hair, then wrapped the towel around his waist and wandered back across the hallway to his quarters. 

Rodney was curled around Elizabeth, both of them fast asleep. _Huh_ , John thought. He hadn’t expected Elizabeth would unbend far enough to actually do it, but there she was, little spoon, in his bed, hands folded by her face, Rodney’s arm over her back, her little sock-clad feet hanging off the edge of his bed. 

She had her radio earpiece folded in her hand, tucked by her cheek, and John smiled a little to see it. He puttered around the room, finding clean underwear, clean socks, clean BDU pants, a clean t-shirt, and dressed unhurriedly. Neither of them stirred, not even when he sat right next to the bed to lace his boots. 

 _Huh._ John hooked his radio headset on, retrieved his gun and holster, put them on, and picked up his tac vest as he left the room. If they needed the sleep, let ‘em sleep. 

 

 

“Yes, unquestionably,” Bates said. “The Minarians gave the Genii the intelligence to do this. There is no doubt in my mind, not after speaking with that Kandal kid. His story was pretty garbled, but we know it was his IDC and we know he didn’t give it up willingly, he just got himself into a dumb situation.” 

John nodded thoughtfully, fingers wrapped around his third mug of coffee, jaw clenched so tight it was giving him a headache. From the look of him, Bates hadn’t slept a wink the entire time they were gone. He’d gotten everyone back safely, though, and had coordinated the return, and John was trying to figure out, through his blinding sick rage at the whole situation, how on earth he could gracefully show his appreciation. 

“Sheppard,” Elizabeth said, “there you are!” She looked a little mussed, puffy-faced, and her gaze lit on his cup of coffee with keen attention.

“Ah,” John said, and handed her his cup, since she seemed to want it. He was really only drinking it because he couldn’t get warm. “There you are, sleepyhead.”

“I can’t believe you left me there asleep,” she said. “I only closed my eyes for a minute because you were coming right back.”

“You needed the sleep,” John said, unperturbed. “Speaking of which, you look like you could use some sleep, Bates.”

Bates smiled a little grimly, but John was learning his expressions, and that one was just baseline— Bates almost always looked about that level of pissed, and if he looked any more or less pissed, you were in trouble one way or another. “I surely could, sir, but there’s a lot of work left to do.”

John nodded. “Yeah, but there’s always work,” he said. “I can take over with whatever’s left from the evacuation. You wrap up what you have to, and then go sack out for a while.” 

“Yes, sir,” Bates said, grimly pleased, and John clapped him on the shoulder. 

“Hey,” he said, “you did great work. It’s awesome to have you to rely on, Bates, and I don’t think I say it enough.”

“From what I understand, you didn’t do too bad a job yourself in all this,” Bates answered, surprising a real smile out of John. 

“Y’know,” John said, “that kinda shit, I have plenty of training for.” 

“Well,” Bates said, “it shows, sir.” He saluted crisply, and John gave him a reasonably sharp response. 

“I owe you a cup of coffee,” Elizabeth said as Bates walked away. 

“Can I take a rain check?” John said. “I gave you that cup because I’d just had like three.”

She laughed. “Hit me up later.”

 

 

Elizabeth looked up to see Sheppard lounging elaborately in the door. He had such a long, lean torso. It was inappropriately attractive. Especially the way his gun belt hung low over his narrow hips, pulled lower still by the thigh holster. “Hey,” she said. 

“Hey,” he answered. “C’mon, take a break and have that coffee with me.”

She couldn’t help but grin in response to his easy half-smile. “Okay,” she said. “I could use a little break. Although I have to say, I’m nowhere near as exhausted as I’d expected I’d be by now.”

Sheppard nodded solemnly. “I told you,” he said, mock-serious. “McKay’s got, like, superpowers of snuggling.”

She smiled and didn’t say anything as they walked through the hallways to the mess, but as they sat down near the window, nobody nearby, she said “That wasn’t the first time he’s slept in your bed, was it.”

Sheppard barely managed to avoid choking on his coffee, set the mug down and wiped his mouth. “Jeez,” he said, “you don’t beat around the bush.”

She put her chin in her hand and raised an eyebrow at him. He glanced at her, then down at his hands. “It was the first time he’s _slept_ in my bed,” Sheppard said, the emphasis careful. 

“Oh,” Elizabeth said. She’d half expected Sheppard to avoid the question. He gave her a sardonic, amused look, and she realized he knew he’d surprised her by answering. “So, um.” She tapped her fingers on the sides of her mug. 

“I like to be kept in the loop,” Sheppard said. “I can’t blame you for wantin’ the same. But I figured you were good at sussing things out. You said you were.”

“That was kind of a bluff,” Elizabeth confessed. 

Sheppard laughed quietly, watching his own hands on the sides of his cup. “I see,” he said. “Well, the thing is, then I should tell you, I’m, we’re not—“ He gestured. “It’s not, like, a thing. It can’t be. It’d be fraternization. It was just— and I didn’t really even mean to, but—“

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Elizabeth said. Was he blushing? He was too tan for a blush to show, but his face was a little darker than normal, his eyes indirect and his mouth a tight line. “It’s all right, John.” Using his name was a calculated risk. 

He flicked his eyes up to hers for a second, then looked down at her hands, thoughtful. Finally he looked back down at his hands. “I just, I said all that stuff about not being gay, and I wasn’t lying, but—“

“I know,” she said. “I understand. Nothing works the way it always has. Everything is different here. And we all could be dead tomorrow, so it doesn’t matter, John.” She laughed softly. “I just like to know what’s up. I can’t predict anything, I can’t even figure out which rules we should follow. I know you’ve caught me looking at you. I’m not one to lecture you on what’s appropriate.”

His color deepened, more obviously a blush. “I,” he said, “I don’t mind, it’s just—“

“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t. I have my own strange, internal rules, and one of them is that I am faithful to the man I left on Earth. But I like to look at you, John. That’s all it is, and that’s all it can be, and I know you know that. We’re on the same page with it, which is why I let myself look.”

He met her eyes now, contemplative, less flustered. “Yeah,” he said, as if he were admitting something. 


	8. Something To Hold On To

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Rodney had known that all it took to transform Major I’m Not Gay into Johnny Not Straight Either was six shots of Radek’s terrifying excuse for grain alcohol, he’d’ve done it a lot sooner.   
> Episode tag to The Defiant One, with thigh holster porn for squidgiepdx, who gave me the AO3 invite I needed to post all this. :)

If Rodney had known that all it took to transform Major I’m Not Gay into Johnny Not Straight Either was six shots of Radek’s terrifying excuse for grain alcohol, he’d’ve done it a lot sooner. 

But he wasn’t lying in Sheppard’s bed for gay sex-related purposes. Not at present, anyway. There was a lot more to their relationship than gay sex. And the whole thing was kind of difficult for Rodney to wrap his head around— not just the gay sex part, because finding someone who was not only queer but into Rodney for more than just furtive and hasty illicit blowjobs, but the whole thing, the saving each other’s lives and laughing at each other’s jokes and getting each other’s incredibly obscure geek references and the apparently mutual attraction. It was more than Rodney really knew how to deal with, not least because Sheppard was among the most macho of the macho, flying things and jumping out of things and shooting things and getting shot by things and generally being so incredibly, incandescently hot that he put Rodney’s impressive porn collection utterly to shame. The abs! The biceps! He had a set of shoulders and a chest straight out of a jeans advertisement. And his mouth. Christ, his mouth. 

Right, right. Rodney wasn’t here for gay sex purposes. He was here out of concern for a friend. An incredibly hot friend who had, in the recent past, shown a predilection for letting Rodney fuck his gorgeous, gorgeous mouth. 

Stay on track. Rodney tried again. He was here out of concern because while Sheppard had been incredibly, mind-blowingly hot on their little adventure across the solar system, his hotness the only redeeming feature of an expedition that had been a rather crushing failure really that Rodney was done brooding about after having spent a considerable portion of the long return journey replaying the most debilitatingly disturbing parts of it over and over— while Sheppard had been unrealistically attractive, he also had been similarly in a bad state on the way back. He’d actually, Rodney was 110% sure (to abuse statistics the way the kids were nowadays), had suffered a pretty severe PTSD flashback in the jumper ride back. The only thing that had saved them from careening off wildly into space was Rodney’s quick thinking and soothing patter. That and the fact that he’d had the informative pamphlet on PTSD that Haightmayer had sent him a PDF of after he’d uncontrollably blabbed about Sheppard’s last PTSD jag with him, the ill-advised grabbing incident. The pamphlet had helpfully suggested talking the sufferer down gently from a flashback, so Rodney had babbled frantically until Sheppard’s white-knuckled grip on the controls and general overall shaking had eased. 

Sheppard had even let him fly the jumper for a while, and had tersely admitted that Rodney was a good friend. He’d also mother-henned a great deal less in his exhaustion, and as a consequence Rodney was feeling a lot better about his own piloting abilities. 

So while Sheppard had gone off to the infirmary to get some stitches and hopefully, some good drugs, Rodney had debriefed quickly, showered, and decided on a nap. But after a few moments, he’d decided it would be better for Sheppard not to be alone after his trauma. Also every time Rodney closed his eyes he saw Gall’s half-exploded face again, so that wasn’t really working out at all for him. 

So he’d let himself into Sheppard’s room to wait for him and make sure he was okay. 

But it had been a couple of hours now, and Sheppard wasn’t back. Fortunately Rodney was a little more able to rest here, surrounded by the smells of Sheppard. The man was pretty compulsive about showering, so he only really smelled of sweat when he was offworld. The rest of the time, he was all various hygeine products and soaps. His shampoo smelled strongly, his aftershave smelled strongly, his deodorant smelled strongly, and none of them were particularly coordinated to one another. It tended to blend together into a rather distinctive but indescribable smell. It was starting to give Rodney inconvenient Pavlovian arousal responses. 

Rodney pretty much deserved a medal for not jerking off in Sheppard’s soothingly arousingly-scented bed. Instead he dozed lightly for a while, then slept pretty deeply, had some really awesome sex dreams involving tantalizingly plausible scenarios with Sheppard— the guy was pretty flexible, Rodney bet he could probably really do a lot of that stuff that nobody’d ever been willing to try with Rodney before— and finally woke up really, really, _really_ turned-on, as Sheppard’s door sighed open.

Rodney yawned and stretched, and turned over. “Hey, there you are,” he said, blinking happily up at Sheppard. He immediately remembered that hey, this thing they did, it was kind of a secret, and it wasn’t really appropriate for him to be lounging around in Sheppard’s bed. “Sorry,” he added hastily. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep in your bed. I came here figuring you’d be along in a minute but I kind of dozed off.” 

Sheppard blinked at him, blank-faced, and for a moment Rodney worried that he’d pissed the guy off. But then his expression softened a bit, not quite to a smile, but to something a little warm and a little, maybe, fond. “Hey, McKay,” he said, and carefully let himself down into the desk chair. 

Rodney glanced at his watch. “Jeez,” he said, “where the hell have you been?”

Sheppard rubbed his face. “Carson needed to work his leechy magic,” he said, wriggling the fingers of one hand, “and I made him let me shower first. And then I wanted to go over the jumper with Zelenka, and then debrief with Elizabeth.”

Rodney scowled. “I was going to go over the jumper with Zelenka tomorrow.”

Sheppard nodded. He really looked tired, poor guy. “I expect you will,” he said. “I just wanted a quick once-over. Well, Zelenka did. And I really wanted to know if that Wraith could’ve gotten the thing to fly.”

“Could he have?” Rodney asked, alarmed. 

John shook his head. “Zelenka says no, not with the tools he had with him. Maybe he could’ve, if he had more stuff back at his ship to work with and a lot more time to work in…” John started to shrug, but visibly aborted the motion, and Rodney remembered he was injured. He’d seemed so blase about it, _a few cracked ribs_ like that wasn’t about the most annoyingly painful injury Rodney could think of. He’d cracked a rib before and had spent about a month convinced the doctors were idiots and didn’t understand that he was dying. Honestly now that he thought about it, it was a miracle he’d survived. 

Rodney slid over to the edge of the bed. He’d been lying on top of the covers, though he’d drooled on the pillow a little. “Hey,” he said, “are you okay?”

Sheppard looked uncomfortable, looked away. He’d changed clothes, but back into the same basic outfit, a black t-shirt and BDU trousers. He even had his sidearm on, in its holster, snug around his lanky thigh. “I’m fine,” he said to the foot of the bed. Rodney put his feet on the floor, looking more carefully. He wasn’t good at people, but he could see that John was tired, a little puffy-faced, a bit beat-up. His hair had dried in even weirder spikes and drifts than usual, carelessly toweled— no, there was little to no product involved in his hair care but there was some careful treatment when wet, which he hadn’t done this time. Rodney had an unusual soft impulse to pet him, to fix his hair and tuck him into bed. It wasn’t at all sexual, which was unnerving; they didn’t have that kind of relationship. _Be cool, McKay,_ he thought to himself sternly. 

“I told Beckett,” Sheppard said abruptly, to his hands this time. He shot a look up at Rodney, then away immediately, back down to his hands. “About the— the flashback thing.” Sheppard twitched a little, as if with the effort of trying to look up and failing. Some of his reserve, Rodney was starting to think, wasn’t badassery so much as shyness. “He said I was doing the right things, and he and Haightmeyer will keep tabs on it. It’s fine, Rodney, I’m all right.”

“I don’t imagine you’re the only one on this mission with that kind of problem,” Rodney said. Shit, he was probably an hour of sleep away from PTSD himself. If that replay of Gall’s death didn’t stop pretty soon, he was probably gonna start reliving it at odd times. It didn’t sound fun. 

“I don’t imagine I am,” Sheppard said, with a grim little half-smile that managed to look almost fond. Rodney wondered if he was imagining that part. He still wasn’t quite looking at Rodney. “Most of my colleagues over the years have had degrees of the same thing. You kinda get used to it, you see when a guy’s kinda checkin’ out or when he’s gettin’ too upset, and you just kinda talk him back, that’s all.”

“Like I did,” Rodney said. 

“Like you did,” Sheppard agreed. “Twice now. Thanks. You just stay calm and keep talkin’. It’s not even a big deal.”

“No,” Rodney said thoughtfully. 

Silence stretched for a moment; Rodney thought maybe Sheppard would have something more to say, but nothing seemed to be forthcoming. Finally Sheppard looked up and gave Rodney a bizarrely gentle smile. “So you came to check on me,” he said. 

“Yeah,” Rodney said, curiously struck by how pleased Sheppard looked. He hadn’t really thought about it ahead of time but if anything he’d expected Sheppard might be a little annoyed at his indiscretion to find him lying in his bed. But evidently it had been the right thing to do. It still felt like dangerous ground, so Rodney dragged it back to what he knew was relatively safe territory. “And, um,” he said, “I also came by because, um, well, you’re… you’re really hot when you’re a badass.”

It was still kind of a risk; he was still half-expecting Sheppard to get annoyed and throw him out. Rodney felt his face heating in a blush. 

Sheppard raised an eyebrow, but his mouth tugged up a little at the corner. “You didn’t do too bad yourself,” he said. “I think the weapons retraining paid off, what do you think?”

Rodney couldn’t help but preen just a little bit. “I didn’t kill him,” he conceded, “but I didn’t miss either.”

“You sure didn’t,” Sheppard said, full-on smirking now. “You were a total fuckin’ hero, Rodney.”

Rodney laughed, at that. “Says the man who attacked a soul-sucking super alien with a Powerbar.”

“An unwrapped Powerbar,” Sheppard put in, as if that mattered. 

Rodney shook his head, and then, a little emboldened by Sheppard’s praise, slid off the bed and knelt between Sheppard’s legs, looking up at him. “I know you’re probably real tired and all,” he said, licking his lips, “but, um—“

“Oh hell yes,” Sheppard said, dropping a hand to his belt. He looked— weirdly relieved. 

Rodney laughed and caught his hands. “Let me,” he said, then hesitated. “Er, unless you just want it quick and dirty, I can do that too.”

Sheppard held up his hands. “You’re the genius,” he said. “I’m not up for anything real athletic but other than that, have at it.”

Rodney grinned. “Anything I want?” 

Sheppard laughed. “Why do I feel like saying yes would be dangerous? Take it easy, I’m broken.”

“What, don’t you trust me?” Rodney asked, pouting a little. 

Sheppard didn’t laugh, but regarded him almost solemnly for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I do.”

Rodney didn’t have a ton of experiences at Significant Relationship Moments— usually they were the other type, where he realized just too late that he’d just uttered or committed some sort of dealbreaker, all unwitting— but this really felt like it might be one, but like, a _good_ one. “Then sit back, my friend, and let me blow your mind.”

“My mind, huh?” Sheppard settled back in the chair and let his knees fall a little farther apart. Rodney slid closer between them and ran his hands up those lean thighs, hooking his fingers around the strap of the gun holster. “Is that what’s down there?”

“There’s a pretty strong connection,” Rodney said, following the strap of the holster around Sheppard’s thigh. “You know, for such a utilitarian item, this thing is really sexy.”

“My gun holster?” Sheppard tilted his head to one side, looking down the length of his own lanky torso at Rodney. “Sexy?”

“Yeah,” Rodney said. “The way it sits, or something. I just wanna… grab you by it, and kinda hold you still so I can do wicked, filthy things to you.”

“Both wicked _and_ filthy, hm?” Sheppard said, but he was relaxing even further into the grip of the chair, his legs sprawling wide around Rodney. “Sounds like my lucky day.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, “it is.” He left Sheppard’s equipment belt fastened but pushed it up a little, and set to work on the much narrower nylon webbing belt beneath it that held his pants up over those skinny hips. The pants fit a lot tighter than normal at the moment, and Rodney rubbed the side of his hand against the growing bulge there, grinning wickedly up as Sheppard made a tiny, rough sound deep in his throat and moved, just a little, against the pressure of his hand. “Is this for me?” he asked. 

“Yeah,” Sheppard said, his voice little more than a gravelly whisper. He had his hands wrapped around the arms of the chair, fingers digging in hard.

Rodney unbuttoned Sheppard’s fly, and breathed warm air against the fabric of the boxer shorts underneath, glancing up under his lashes, a little coyly. Sheppard was watching him, rapt, lips parted, breath coming a little heavy, and Rodney grinned and turned his attention back downward. He rubbed gently through the fabric, teasing, pulling the fly placket of the boxers a little bit, then a little bit more, slowly revealing the skin of Sheppard’s steadily growing erection. 

Sheppard hissed through his teeth as Rodney lowered his face and slipped just the tip of his tongue between the edges of the fabric, tasting hot skin and the crinkle of hair. True to form, Sheppard mostly smelled of soap, even here. Rodney licked a teasing stripe on the skin he could reach, following Sheppard’s cock where it was trapped sort of sideways; he was all the way hard now, and twitched his hips in reaction.

Rodney grabbed the thigh holster and held him down by it, mouthing at his erection through the fabric of his boxers, one hand wrapped in the leg strap of the holster, curling the fingers of his other hand around the waist belt to pin Sheppard’s pelvis down against the chair. Sheppard grunted in surprise or arousal, and Rodney paused a moment to glance up at him and grin wickedly. 

“Shit,” Sheppard said, not at all upset, and Rodney kept his hands twined in the straps and went to work with just his mouth. He bit at the fabric and tugged it here and there, paused now and then to breathe hot moist air through it, teased with his tongue and his lips where Sheppard’s cock strained against the fabric, trapped in a way that had to be uncomfortable but was also keeping him tensed up against Rodney’s restraining hands. 

It took a while, but finally Rodney managed to tug the boxers’ fly open enough that Sheppard’s cock slid free. Sheppard groaned and twisted in Rodney’s grasp as Rodney immediately swallowed his cock down as far as he could manage. “Holy fuck,” Sheppard gasped, thrusting hard enough that Rodney had to shove him back down by his grip on the equipment belt. 

Rodney went to work, holding him down and working mercilessly at his cock with lips, tongue, teeth, and throat. Sheppard squirmed in his grasp, panting hoarsely, hands white-knuckled on the arms of the chair as if Rodney had tied them there. Which was an idea… but it didn’t take a genius to guess that Sheppard wasn’t likely to actually enjoy being tied up. 

It was the work of a matter of moments to bring him right up to the edge, a shivering, panting wreck, muttering curses that kept shading into incoherence. Rodney pulled back, letting Sheppard’s cockhead rest in the cradle of his tongue, and looked up; Sheppard’s head was tilted back, eyes closed, breath coming hard. 

“Mm,” Rodney said, pulling his head back, “C’mere,” and pulled Sheppard’s body, in the wheeled chair, toward the bed. He dumped him unceremoniously into the bed, yanking his pants and boxers down. They tangled, of course, in the thigh holster, but Rodney didn’t care, shoving a shoulder under Sheppard’s knee, bending his legs up.

“Whoa,” Sheppard said, dazed, as Rodney pinned him in place with one hand in his equipment belt, the other moving down from his cock to his balls. Rodney nuzzled at them, then moved down, licking with the flat of his tongue back, back, until Sheppard squirmed in ticklish surprise. Rodney laughed out loud and dove in: maybe Sheppard had way more sexual experience than Rodney did, but he’d never been rimmed, from this reaction. 

“Rodney!” Sheppard said, voice uneven; he was still twitching, trembling, still close to the edge. “Jesus, that’s filthy.”

“Mm,” Rodney hummed happily, licking at Sheppard’s balls before working the point of his tongue back down, teasing sloppily, wetly, at Sheppard’s tight hole. He held Sheppard down with both hands, keeping him from squirming too much, until his squeamish resistance faded. Only then did Rodney let go and move his hand down to Sheppard’s cock, giving it a little attention, a few slow, firm strokes. Sheppard groaned, breathing harsh and fast, but he was into it now, passive and pliant. Rodney let go of the equipment belt and brought his other hand down too. Keeping up the firm, slow rhythm of his fist along Sheppard’s shaft, he brought his other hand down and added a teasing forefinger to the swirl of his tongue. 

Sheppard made a fervent noise as Rodney slipped just the tip of his finger into John’s asshole. “Mmmm,” Rodney said again, enjoying the reaction. He pressed in deeper— Sheppard was so hot, so tight, and he tasted like sex, he tasted like lust and desire and the tingling edge of an oncoming orgasm. 

Rodney moved up and swallowed Sheppard’s cock down as he pressed in with his finger, crooking it forward. Sheppard made a strangled noise and his hips jerked helplessly, again and again with each motion of Rodney’s finger, each hard wet suck of his mouth, like he was getting electric shocks from them, like Rodney was running current straight through him. 

“God, fuck, _Rodney_ ,” Sheppard gasped, desperate and sharp, and came, long and hard, shudders racking his lithe body and wrenching quiet breathless cries out of him.

It was so unbelievably hot that Rodney came too, right in his pants, rubbing against the edge of the bed. “Holy fuck,” he said shakily in a moment, shivers still zinging through him. He had to disentangle himself from Sheppard’s thigh holster, and he sat up, wiping his mouth. 

Sheppard gazed up at him, eyes unfocused, mouth open, expression dazed. “Yeah,” he said, “holy fuck.” He looked so bewildered, so vulnerable and sleepy. Rodney beamed dopily at him for a moment before collecting himself enough to finally unbuckle the equipment belt, take off Sheppard’s boots, strip him out of his pants, and then strip off most of his own clothing and curl himself around him. 

“It’s all right,” Rodney said, apropos of nothing. “I’ve got you.”

Sheppard settled into his grasp, sighing. “Okay,” he said, and fell asleep immediately. 

 


	9. Put On The Red Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes your trading partners just need a certain extra something. 
> 
> warning: dubious consent, but non-explicit
> 
> This is a short chapter. Up next is a long one with some much happier smut.

The first time the Crone grabbed John’s ass he jumped a mile. Grabbing his composure with both metaphorical hands, he scrambled his back against the wall and summoned a blank, bright grin. “Hey,” he said, “hey there, buy me dinner first, I don’t even know your first name,” and laughed nervously. 

The Crone was the de facto ruler of the main civilization on P47-G33. She was about thirty-five, a handsome dark-haired woman with dark eyes and artfully, carefully wild hair, dressed in flowing robes that did not conceal the fact that she was quite attractive. John had flirted diplomatically with her, but had been rather too cowed by her skull-adorned staff and belt decorated with some sort of claws to do more than just the standard grin and eyebrow wiggle. Apparently she’d taken that as more of an invitation than he’d really intended. 

John was good at flirting, but mostly best at the kind that didn’t involve touching. Maybe a little touching, but only when he was expecting it. There was something very predatory in her gaze, and something very darkly amused in her regard after his jump. “Buy me dinner,” she echoed, purring a little. “Is this a custom? I am not aware of it.”

“Ah,” John said uneasily, laughing to hide it, “nah, it’s an old joke, and not a very good one. Never mind.”

“Hmm,” she said, and John finally put his finger on it: she reminded him of a Wraith queen. Her demeanor, her gaze, even the way she was dressed, though she was a little more Earth Goddess and a little less High Goth. She even had long nails and elaborate jewelry on her fingers. He let his eyes flicker downward, demurely, and hid his shudder as she turned away. 

“What’s wrong, Major?” Teyla murmured, nearly silently, into his ear. 

“She scares the hell outta me,” John murmured back. “Are you getting any kinda vibe off her?” 

“No, John,” Teyla said, concerned. 

“OK then,” he said, “it’s just me.” He steeled himself, and the next time she grazed her fingernails across the back of his neck he controlled his flinch. He looked up, grin fixed, and caught Rodney’s eyes, and just for a second he let his panic show. 

A few minutes later Rodney had worked his way over to John’s side, while John was allowing himself to be cowardly and hiding on the far side of a pillar, trying to collect himself. “What’s your problem, Sheppard?” he hissed. “She’s hot!”

“She won’t stop _touching_ me,” John hissed back desperately. His neck was still tingling with unease where she’d touched it.

“But she’s _hot_ ,” Rodney insisted, nearly squawking.

“I don’t _want_ her to touch me,” John hissed back, feeling about five years old. 

“Why the hell not?” Rodney asked. 

“I don’t like it when—” John said, and it was immediately too whiny even for him. He let out his breath, squared his shoulders, and said, “Right, right. Never mind. Food. We need food. Buck up, John.”

He’d never seen the look that crossed Rodney’s face and tugged the left side of his mouth down. It was unusually… soft. “Sheppard,” Rodney said. 

John rotated his neck, tugged his uniform shirt square, and swallowed hard. “Food, John,” he said, and forced his creeping heebie-jeebies back down. These people had several cities, a healthy population— on offer was good-quality fabric that would make much-needed blankets and towels, some tubers that were very like potatoes, and butter— almost exactly like the kind of butter you’d get from grass-fed cows on Earth, but a little bit tangier. Plus the bonus of a few kegs of something that tasted an awful lot like beer and had an alcohol content of about 4% by volume. And all they wanted was some help with an irrigation system, some of the aspirin they made from tree bark and traded with everybody, and apparently, John’s ass. It was a small price to pay. 

John started drinking. He pulled Teyla aside, said “You’re in charge,” looked around, lowered his voice more, and said “If I go missing, it’s probably okay, just don’t leave without me?”

She looked at him, looked at the full, enormous mug in his hand, looked over at the Crone, and nodded, as if he’d just told her he was volunteering for a dangerous mission. “I understand,” she said. “Major, are you sure you want to do this?”

“I’m sure I have to,” John said, and drank about six more ounces of the beer in his mug. 

“We do need the deal to go through,” Teyla said, face a little troubled. “Major, simple negotiation could probably get us reasonable terms. But you are correct, their leader obviously wants you, and if you indulge her, she will more than likely throw in some of the fruit she mentioned but did not offer. It seemed clear to me that was why she had mentioned it.”

John nodded, breathed out, took another deep pull on his glass. “Yet I feel your heart is not in this,” Teyla said. 

“No,” John said, “it really isn’t. She scares me.” He had to stop then, and burp; he’d swallowed too much too quickly. But in a moment he managed to get the air bubble out, discreetly behind his hand, and it made enough room in his sloshing stomach that he was able to finish the rest of the mug and pour himself another. Teyla was watching him. He finally said, “Would you?”

“Would I what?” she asked.

“If the leader of a people took a shine to you and made it obvious they’d give you better terms, would you sleep with them even if you didn’t particularly want to?” John could feel the alcohol now, months of abstinence from it had made him a lightweight. He’d probably had the equivalent of about four cheap American beers. 

Teyla was thoughtful a long moment. “It depends,” she said, “but yes, I have done this.”

John nodded. “All right then,” he said. 

She put a hand on his arm. “You do not have to, Major,” she said. “You do not have to do this. I do not know what kind of value is placed on sexual autonomy in your culture but in ours— I would not do this unless I were desperate, or truly did not mind. We are not so desperate. You clearly do not want to.”

“How bad could it be?” John said, looking down into his mug. 

“It could be bad, Major Sheppard,” Teyla said, frowning. “If she frightens you, it is probably with good reason. You have good instincts.”

“No,” John said, “not about this I don’t.” He burped quietly, and filled the space that left with more of the almost-beer. He nodded to himself. “Right. I’m goin’ in. Cover me.”

“With what?” Teyla asked, but he shot her a glance and it was obvious she knew he was kidding. Solemnly, she said, “Good luck. And do not do anything you will regret.”

 

 

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” John said, sunglasses firmly in place. Rodney sat up; he’d evidently slept in the jumper. Teyla had been in the main hall when John had staggered out, but he’d managed to get away without talking to her either. She was already in discussion with the steward, who looked a little annoyed but was paying obsequious attention to every word Teyla spoke.

“Talk about what?” Rodney said muzzily, then snapped to attention. “Jesus! Do you have a black eye?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” John said again, pawing through the rack for a spare canteen. He had three of the aspirin that technically belonged to these people in his hand, and swallowed them down with half the canteen. 

“I don’t imagine you do,” Rodney said finally, settling his hands between his knees. “Come here and let me look at that.”

“I’m fine,” John said, but sat on the bench next to Rodney with a shudder.

“That bad, huh?” Rodney was quiet. “I— it’s too bad she didn’t fancy me, I thought she was hot.”

“You didn’t want this,” John said, “trust me.” Rodney slid closer on the bench and put his hand up to cup John’s jaw and pull his sunglasses off. John jerked his head away skittishly. “Don’t touch me,” he said, eyes closed. 

“Did we at least,” Rodney said, letting his hand fall.

“Yeah,” John said. “She’s so pleased with us she’s throwing in about fifteen big bushel things of that fruit and another three kegs of the beer. And she said she’d give Teyla the gate addresses of four more of her best trading partners.”

“Huh,” Rodney said. “So… it was worth it.”

“Sure,” John said, slumping with a wince. She’d left marks all down his back and they stung something awful.

“Did she,” Rodney began.

“I said I don’t want to talk about it,” John said. 

“Hm,” Rodney said. After a long moment he bumped his shoulder against John’s. “You gonna be okay?”

“I wasn’t okay to begin with,” John said bleakly, “so it probably doesn’t matter.” They sat in companionable silence for a few long moments. This was the guy he was mostly sleeping with, John thought finally, so he should probably come clean with him. He sighed, finished the canteen, and rolled his neck, then his shoulders. 

“We didn’t really screw, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said. 

“It’s okay,” Rodney said. “Whatever happened. It’s fine. Don’t even— you did what you had to.”

“I mean, for STD purposes or whatever,” John said. “I didn’t— she mostly just wanted to—“ He shuddered. “Kinky shit, but not actually sex. So, like… if that matters.”

“Well,” Rodney said, “I mean, if that’s less bad?”

“I dunno,” John said. He shivered again. “Well, it wasn’t the _worst_ thing I’ve ever gone through.”

“High praise,” Rodney said. “Is that what you tell people about me?”

“I don’t tell people things about you,” John said, turning his head. Even through the sunglasses he could see Rodney’s face clearly, could see that Rodney was worried. It was kind of sweet, really. He let out a long breath, and bumped his shoulder against Rodney’s. “I’ll be okay. I just get first dibs on the new towels.”

Rodney laughed far too tightly. “Sheppard,” he said, “you get anything you want.”

“If we ever come back here,” John said thoughtfully, “I’m gonna tell her I’m married.”

“Good call,” Rodney said. 


	10. Leverage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Episode tag to Hot Zone, and then some. Drinking games, making fun of John's hair, mourning the lost, and then slightly kinky sex, with voyeurism.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also contains references to the events of Martha Wells' truly excellent tie-in novel [Reliquary](http://marthawells.com/reliquary.htm).

John slouched against the wall in the hallway near the 17th-floor lounge. He could hear the voices there, a little more subdued now than on that memorable evening so long ago. (Well, not that long, really…) They had better hooch, but they were missing so many of their number. 

Including Kolesnikova, who’d died in that miserable offworld outpost, the wrecked lab, along with Cpl. Boerne and, almost, John himself. He hadn’t tried to find out who ran the betting pools now. He’d never had the chance to spring the punchline that he understood Russian on her. Though Zelenka still didn’t know, John rather thought the joke was less funny now.

And now she was gone, and Gall and Abrams, because John hadn’t done enough to protect his scientists offworld. And now Dumais, and Peterson, Hays and Wagner and Johnson, from the nanovirus in the labs, because John hadn’t done enough to protect the scientists in the city. And there wasn’t much point blaming himself, and he’d gone over all the protocols he could think of to try and reduce the chances, but there was no way to guarantee they’d have any better luck the next time around. 

Elizabeth had given a really stirring speech at the funerals. There was a crematorium on Atlantis, so they’d been cremating anyone whose remains they could recover. Elizabeth was good at speeches. But then she’d asked John to speak.

A few people had said what he’d said was nice, but he’d just sort of gone up there and forced words out until he’d felt like he was babbling, and then had summed up and shut his mouth and nodded. It was fucking impossible, there was never anything to say that helped. 

“Oh,” a voice said behind him, “hey,” and he jerked upright guiltily, turning. Elizabeth. She looked tired, and was wearing as informal an outfit as she ever did— plain black trousers, a knit long-sleeved almost-t-shirt. How she had twice as big a wardrobe as anyone else, John had never figured out— he’d seen her come through the gate with the same size knapsack as most of the other civilians. He himself was starting to face the fact that he got beat to hell often enough that he was running out of uniforms that looked reputable. Only his neat hand with a needle was keeping him this side of respectable.

“Hey,” he said, unable to muster a whole smile. 

“Your eulogy thing was amazing,” Elizabeth said. 

John shrugged, uncomfortable. “I said some stuff,” he said. 

“‘When my time comes, don’t grieve for me,’” Elizabeth quoted. “‘When my luck finally runs out or I do something stupid or my enemy just catches me dead to rights and there’s nothing I can do, don’t cry for me. Be glad, because I died doing the best job I could do, in the coolest place I could ever imagine.’” She shook her head. “That was brilliant, John.” 

“I said true stuff,” he said. In a moment he added, “You memorized it?”

“I’m good at that,” she said. 

John nodded slowly. The dregs of their earlier argument, about the quarantine, about John’s defiance, still lay heavy and spiky between them, and he was having uncomfortable flashbacks to Nancy— the bad times, not the good times. He knew avoiding Weir wouldn’t help at all, but he hadn’t really had the strength for anything else. 

“C’mon,” she said. “I just got a call from Grodin that they were having the post-wake up here. Are you working up the nerve to go in?”

“Kinda,” John said, hunching his shoulders, shoving his hands in his pockets. It was an olive branch, and he should take it. “I wasn’t invited, though, I just realized, so I was kinda—“

Elizabeth shook her head. “Everyone’s invited. Jesus, John, you were the one who made the heroic rescue in the end, you can’t imagine they would want to exclude you?”

John smiled thinly. “It’s never about that,” he said. Elizabeth was good, she was really good; there was no hint of any remaining anger or bitterness or awkwardness in her face or voice or eyes, which could mean he was just being paranoid, but no. He knew that couldn’t be it. He’d known the cost of it when he forced Bates to open the door, right on the command channel in front of everyone. He’d known, and the cost wasn’t paid yet. He had experience at this, as she’d pointed out so incisively; he had a ton of experience at defiance, and if she thought that didn’t mean he knew all of the complex and precise calculus of determining the cost, then she didn’t really know him at all. 

But she was a diplomat, and if she didn’t want him to know what costs remained for him to pay, he wasn’t going to guess it from her expression. He was all right at shoving things behind a blank facade, but, well— he had reason to suspect he wasn’t as all right at it as he’d always thought he was. She was reading him right now, and probably getting it wrong. But he didn’t have any words for her, couldn’t explain to her that he wasn’t really interested in making everything a military situation, just the life-or-death ones where fighting would make the difference. It was hardly his fault that pretty much everything fell into that category lately.

“Come on,” she said, touching his arm and catching a little fold of his jacket near his elbow, tugging him toward the room, and he followed her into the lounge, unable not to think that it would look good for them to enter together, as if they’d sought out one another’s company and weren’t fighting. That was a fine line, though; if people thought they were sleeping together, that could only hurt both of them. 

This was the sort of thing John had been raised to do, to always calculate power and appearances, and it was something he’d fled, and something he suspected he wasn’t all that good at, but there it was, the old training, raising its head. Welcome or not. 

McKay was slouched morosely in a chair by the door. He looked up and caught John’s eye and lit up gratifyingly. “Well hello,” he said. “Nice of you to join us.”

“Nice of you to invite me,” John shot back, neutral; if McKay had been as sarcastic as he’d sounded, there was his sarcastic answer, but if not, it wasn’t a cruel answer. 

“You are behind,” Zelenka said. “You must catch up.” He thrust a coffee mug at each of them, but they did not contain coffee. John sniffed carefully. It wasn’t the horrible cherry drink powder, but it wasn’t…

“What is this?” John asked. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that Elizabeth had tipped up the cup, slamming back the contents. 

“No questions,” Zelenka said. 

“Fair enough,” John said, and drank his portion down. It was eye-watering, but less metallic and greasy than the other stuff had been. Elizabeth was blinking next to him, and coughed a little bit. John pulled his canteen off the back of his equipment belt and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she said tightly, and took a deep swig. John took the canteen back absently, wiped the mouth, recapped it, put it back on his belt. He was realizing that he’d probably just consumed about three ounces’ worth of hard liquor in one go. And so had Elizabeth. He didn’t have much tolerance; his usual self-imposed limit was three drinks in a night. Radek had just poured him another one. 

“Come, sit,” Grodin said, tugging gently at Elizabeth’s elbow. “We’re doing a game in Irina’s honor.”

Elizabeth looked blank, and John settled beside her and said, “Kolesnikova used to run all the betting pools.” 

“All of them,” Grodin said somberly. “Karen has stepped in, she has the organizational skills, but…”

“Nobody has the flair for it that Irina did,” Karen Simpson said, from the other side of the coffee table. Her face was puffy, eyes red-rimmed; John had always thought of her as unsentimental and spiky, but obviously the loss of so many colleagues had effected her. She was drunk, too. Actually, most of them were. He glanced over. Yeah, McKay was too, though he seemed to be brooding in solitude. 

“John,” Grodin said, and John looked up, startled. None of the scientists had ever called him by his given name. Grodin winced a little. “We’re trying to use first names. It’s an experiment.”

“Oh,” John said, “sure, Peter, that’s fine. I like that, it’s that little bit of extra distance from our day jobs. Er, twenty-four-seven jobs.”

“Twenty-eight seven,” Simpson put in morosely. 

“True,” John said. 

“We invited a few more of the military contingent,” Zelenka said. John cast about for his first name. Radek. Yes. He knew that. “But Aiden said they were sort of doing their own thing.”

“Yeah,” John said, looking down into his cup. “I stopped by. It’s… it’s different for us. I can tell ‘em to use my name when we’re off-duty and stuff, but it’s… I learned when I was a baby lieutenant, nobody really truly likes that. It’s better to… for me to just put in an appearance, say my piece, smile at everybody, and leave.” He shrugged. “I been doing this a while. Though usually, I’m posted someplace where I can go hang out with the other officers. I’ve never… it’s lonely at the top.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said, “it is.”

He clicked his cup against hers and gave her a wry-mouthed look. “Also,” he said, turning back to Zelenka, to lighten the mood, “I figured Bates deserved to have a drink, and he is wound so tight that he can’t even fart when I’m in the room. Poor man is in daily danger of exploding. He’s a good head of security but if he has a personality, I think I’m better off not knowin’ about it.” 

That got a good laugh from the room. As it died down, Grodin said, “Did anyone invite Teyla?”

“She went to the mainland,” John said. “She’d already planned on it, they were havin’ some sort of thing tonight.” He rubbed the back of his hair contemplatively. “Day after tomorrow is irrigation ditches. There’s still room on the rosters if anybody wants to come with.”

“Game!” Grodin said abruptly, rather transparently avoiding the awkwardness of not wanting to volunteer to dig ditches with the Athosians. “We were having a game! Everybody in. I promise it’s not Daddy Issues Bingo.”

“Aw,” John said, “I always win that one.”

“Exactly,” Grodin said, a little darkly. 

Rodney was still slouched in the chair by the door, but when Elizabeth asked how the games worked, Grodin artfully coaxed him enough out of his sulk to relate the story of how he’d cleaned everyone out. “Oh yes,” Rodney said, pulling his chair a little closer into the circle. “Let me tell you of my greatest triumph.”

“Your greatest ever?” Elizabeth asked, coy.

“Oh,” Rodney said, too drunk to parse sarcasm, “no, my greatest ever would be a different story entirely, and probably not appropriate for this room. But my greatest triumph of the Atlantis Science Department Betting Pools was the one about Major Sheppard’s Hair.”

“I thought we weren’t using ranks,” Elizabeth said. 

“Oh,” Rodney said, “not as forms of address. But understand, this isn’t about John’s hair. This is about the persona of his hair. It’s a thing. The hair of the military commander of the expedition is a different matter than whatever his unruly mop is doing at this moment.”

John put a hand up self-consciously, careful not to disarrange it further. It felt about like usual. He’d actually combed it, made a little bit of an effort, for the funerals, but that was hours ago and it had reset itself to default in the interim. “I wasn’t in on this,” he said to Elizabeth.

“No, he wasn’t,” Rodney said. “But the thing is, I had access, you see, as his suitemate, sharing a bathroom with him as I do. I told my rapt audience,” and he gestured, “that I had inside knowledge and could provide precise details of his actual hair-care regimen. So Irina, genius that she was, decided this would be an ideal subject for a betting pool. So she swore me to complete silence on this matter, and set the pool up in the normal way. Everyone had to submit their theory, she used a randomizer to anonymize them all, and then when it was time for the big reveal, she gave them all to me, and I went through them to see whose guess was closest. I had, of course, already written out my correct answer. So I had to pick the closest match, and then she ran it backward through the anonymizer to determine who had written it, for that person to collect their prize. But then there’s the punchline.”

“And what’s the punchline?” Elizabeth asked. 

“Well,” Rodney said, “let’s pause a moment and see what you would have wagered. Think, just for a moment, about Major Sheppard’s Hair, the mythical entity. Consider it. No, don’t look at John, that’s different, we’re not picking on him right now. We’re talking about the abstract concept of Major Sheppard’s Hair.” 

“Good,” John muttered, sinking a little lower against the couch cushions. He’d heard this story, long ago, the first time he’d attended one of these things— right after the hang fire incident where he’d gotten shot— but it was still more embarrassing than not.

“All right,” Elizabeth said, closing her eyes. “I’m thinking about it.”

“It’s majestic, isn’t it?” Rodney said. “Like, he’s got to have some kind of technique to get it to do that. Some kind of incredible routine he follows. It’s so lofty, so copious… so consistent. So, the question was, how many jars and bottles and tubes of hair care products does he use to achieve this? How do you think he makes that style happen, every day without fail? Does he use a hairdryer? A flatiron? Tools? Gels? Sprays? What does his hair-care shelf look like? How long does it take him?”

“Hm,” Elizabeth said, blinking. “Wait, I’m envisioning it.”

“Take your time,” Rodney said. “Since the bet is already settled, there’s nothing really at stake here. And don’t pay attention to John sitting next to you or that face he’s making. That’s not what this is about.”

“Finish your drink,” Radek said, “and then it won’t bother you.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” John said, but he took a swig obediently. Fuck it. 

“Okay,” Elizabeth said, “I’m guessing to get that level of consistency some of it has to be naturally-occurring, especially because I’ve seen him in the middle of the night and after heavy rainstorms and the like, and it’s still pretty much like that, more or less. So I’m figuring he’s probably picky about shampoo, probably uses one kind of gel and a comb, and probably takes about seven or eight minutes.”

Rodney grinned and looked around the room. Everyone was laughing. Of course, because most of them knew the answer already. Zelenka had his tablet out, and in a moment, he turned it toward Elizabeth. 

“There,” he said. “That is the photo Rodney provided.”

Elizabeth blinked at it. “It’s a shelf,” she said. It was, indeed, the shelf in their bathroom that John used for his personal grooming items. There was a nail clipper, a cheap plastic comb, a stick of deodorant, a tube of aftershave, a safety razor and pack of refill blades, a pair of tweezers, and a toothbrush. (Their tube of toothpaste was shared and at this point was some homemade crap, their supplies of it from Earth having long since run out. Actually John kind of liked it, though Rodney complained.) 

“That’s it,” Rodney said. “That’s the photo I took, which I swore on my mother’s grave was unaltered, unstaged, of John’s shelf in our bathroom. That’s all he’s got.”

“We had to pack light,” John said defensively. 

“No gel,” Elizabeth said. 

“No gel,” Rodney said. “No brush. No hair spray. No teasing comb. No special anything. And the shampoo he uses is the same stuff we all use, that we got from that place by trading them the aspirin we made out of tree bark.” 

“No shit,” Elizabeth said, finally turning to John, and he had to laugh at her dumbstruck expression. 

“Nobody guessed right,” Rodney said gleefully. “Not a single person was even close. You’re probably the most conservative guesser; you’re closer than anybody else. The correct answer is no gel, no particular care over combing it, but he finger-combs it when it’s wet and never scruffs it up with a towel, ever. That’s it. That is the sum total of the care and maintenance of Major Sheppard’s Hair.”

“Also,” John said, half-mumbling, “I can’t sleep with it wet or it’s the end of the world.”

That got a good laugh from most everyone in the room, at least the ones listening enough to have heard him. Rodney sat back, satisfied. 

“And that’s how I cleaned everyone out,” Rodney said. “I won the whole pot with that photo.”

“And he didn’t share any of it with me,” John said, a little hurt. “He didn’t even let me in on it!” 

“Of course not,” Rodney said archly. “That would have smacked of collusion. And I couldn’t bear for anyone to think I’d cheated.” 

“Naturally,” Elizabeth said with a laugh. 

“Irina had a knack for uncovering cheaters,” Zelenka said sadly. 

“If it’s any consolation, it was quick,” Rodney said, and John surprised himself by making a small distressed noise. He’d known that, he’d been told— she’d been stabbed, right under the collarbone, by the mind-control drug lunatic who’d just lured John and Teyla off into a trap, and had probably bled out in under a minute— but he hadn’t seen the body. He’d been out of commission by the end of that whole thing, near death for days, and he’d missed the funerals. 

Irina wasn’t the only one they’d lost. He’d lost a couple Marines too. 

He preoccupied himself with drinking down the rest of the liquor in his cup, pretending not to see the startled and sympathetic looks the others were giving him. 

“We all should drink to that,” Zelenka said. 

“To a quick death?” Simpson said, wrinkling her nose.

“That is not what I meant,” Zelenka said, gentle and sad, “but it is, perhaps, not a bad wish.” 

“When I was doing medevacs we had a saying,” John said. “Dear Lord, get me outta this, but if you don’t, let me die quick. It was kind of a joke.”

“A little morbid,” Elizabeth said. 

“By the end of that six-month rotation everyone was dead but me,” John said. “Our jokes tended to be a little morbid with good reason.”

“Well,” Grodin said brightly, “so much for that conversation. Let’s drink!”

“Is this the stuff we got from PG7-488?” Elizabeth asked after the pause where everybody got poured another cup. 

“Some of it is,” Grodin said. “We cut it half and half with the latest efforts from the still that officially does not exist.” He tilted his head. “Radek is getting better at it.”

“It is more that it has had time to mature,” Radek offered a little nervously.

“It’s almost good,” Elizabeth said. 

“Nah,” John said easily, “you’ve just been here too long.” But he grinned at her as he finished his third cup. That was probably more than he should’ve had. The initial cup was kicking in, and now he’d surpassed his normal tolerance threefold. He should stop if he wanted to wake up tomorrow morning in any kind of reasonable shape. 

He wasn’t going to stop, though.

 

 

Elizabeth said her goodbyes, giggling uncontrollably at Grodin’s witty patter— the drunker he got, the wittier he thought he was, but everyone else’s increasing level of intoxication meant that they were all on the bandwagon of thinking him funny too. John and Rodney had just left together, and she wanted to catch up to them, though she wasn’t sure why. She’d planned on making a point of talking to John this evening sometime, but at this point she was tipsy enough— hell, drunk— that she couldn’t quite remember why.

She walked quickly, if a little unsteadily, down the corridor, still laughing to herself. Rodney and John lived on the north pier, so she went to a transporter and took it to their corridor. She heard John’s distinctive giggle, not his crazy laugh but a smaller noise, echoing down one of the side corridors, and followed it, smiling to herself. 

She paused as she approached the corner; their footsteps were slower and less even than hers, and she’d glimpsed that John had his arm around Rodney’s shoulders as they’d rounded the corner ahead of her. Their footsteps paused, pattered, paused again, and she slowly came up to the corner to see that John was herding Rodney backwards into the near wall with his chest, pushing his weight carefully against Rodney’s, artfully— he had perfect balance, even drunk— guiding him to a flat spot in the wall and crowding close against him, ducking his head.

John paused, and from this angle, over Rodney’s shoulder, Elizabeth could clearly see the intent focus on John’s face, the little smile that curved and parted his lips. God he had such soft-looking lips. “Hey, Rodney,” he murmured, and closed the distance between them. This close Elizabeth could see the sheen of moisture as Rodney’s lip slid along John’s, could see the glimpse of tongue as Rodney teased into Sheppard’s mouth. John had his far hand up by Rodney’s face, cradling his jaw, holding him steady so he could kiss him harder. 

Elizabeth stood transfixed in the middle of the hallway, knees locking, insides suddenly Jell-O as her heart rate kicked up. One of the men made a low, humming sound, muffled and heartfelt. John’s shoes— he was wearing his civilian shoes, not his boots— scuffed a little as he stepped in closer, pressing the length of his lissome torso against Rodney, pushing him back against the wall, edging his thigh between Rodney’s, hooking a finger in Rodney’s belt loop to pull Rodney’s body tighter to his. Was he— yes, he was rubbing his pelvis against Rodney’s hip, already hitching a little. 

Weren’t there— Elizabeth tore her eyes away and turned to look up at the ceiling. Surveillance cameras. The thought jolted her two different directions at once— one, worry that it was quite all right for them to do this in private, but perhaps not for there to be recordings of her chief science officer and expedition military commander tongue-fucking in the hallway, and the other a visceral bolt of arousal thinking that if she could just figure out which camera to watch, she could see as much as she wanted of them. 

She knew she was a voyeur, she knew she liked to look at things. Sheppard probably knew, too, from the brief, abortive conversation they’d had— he’d caught her watching him, knew she liked to look, knew that part of why she liked it was that was all it was. But this was crossing a line. 

The camera was behind her. It could, she thought, from that angle, see her where she stood, but not the men. It was possible that was why John had herded Rodney all the way toward this wall. There should be another camera in the other hall, though. Except, possibly there wasn’t. The cameras weren’t evenly distributed, weren’t laid out to reflect the usage the expedition made of the facility— they’d been installed by the Ancients, who’d used these rooms in entirely different ways. 

“God,” Rodney said, broken and breathless, “Sheppard, yes.”

John laughed, a low, breathy sound that went straight through Elizabeth’s midsection and settled down between her pelvic bones. It was completely unlike any other noise she’d ever heard him make. “How far you wanna take this?” he murmured, sliding his mouth up Rodney’s neck, biting at his jaw. Rodney shuddered, long eyelashes backlit in their flutter down to his cheek as his eyes rolled back, John’s hips rolling up against his. God, they were so hot, they fit together perfectly, the swell of John’s bicep curving against the bulk of Rodney’s shoulder, the taut length of John’s torso arched in to press Rodney to the wall. 

Rodney huffed a near-silent laugh. “Obviously you’re not too drunk to get it up,” he said. 

“Obviously,” John murmured, resting his forehead against Rodney’s and grinding up against him so hard Rodney’s eyes fluttered closed and his breath caught on a little whimper. 

“Not too drunk to come either?” Rodney continued on a broken-up half-whisper. 

“Nope,” John said, lips curving, wet and swollen as he slid his tongue across them, then tilted down onto Rodney’s mouth again. 

“Nnngh,” Rodney said, hips jerking; John had slid a hand down the back of Rodney’s pants and she couldn’t see what he was doing but she could guess. “God,” he said, pulling away from John’s mouth, “yes, Sheppard, God, why now?”

“Hmm?” John pulled back a little, giving him a raised-eyebrow look, eyelids heavy and mouth, God, so wet, it was a tragic waste to leave those lips unkissed even for a second. Elizabeth trembled and bit down on her own lower lip. 

“I thought you were avoiding me,” Rodney said, visibly pulling himself together. 

John’s face went blank for an instant, then slid into an almost-sad look. “I got a rule that I don’t instigate,” he said. “But I—“ He looked abashed. “Forgot.”

Rodney’s mouth went a little hard, though at this angle Elizabeth couldn’t make out his expression. “These sorts of rules work better if I know them too,” he said. 

“That’s a rule too, though,” John said. “You can’t talk about rules.”

“That’s a dumb rule,” Rodney answered, a little annoyed now. “What, wait, all this time I could’ve had you if I asked?”

“Yeah,” John said. 

“Idiot,” Rodney said. 

John took his mouth again. “Hey,” he murmured, “I don’t make the rules.”

“I will, then,” Rodney answered. “Jesus.”

This wasn’t an anonymous sex act that she was watching, it wasn’t a performance for her benefit, this was a private moment between two people she had no right to intrude upon. Elizabeth tried to take her eyes off the gorgeous line of John’s throat, pulse beating visibly under his jaw as he bent to shove Rodney’s face back, hold it in place so he could push deeper with his tongue— she wrenched her eyes away and took a step backward, then another, back into the shadows so she could turn away.

“Oh,” John said, his tone so suddenly different that she looked up. He was staring right at her, mouth open, frozen. In a moment Rodney flailed his shoulders free enough to turn and see her. “Um,” John said, “hi,” swallowing hard, and pulled his hand out of Rodney’s pants.

“Shit,” Rodney said. “Um, it’s not what it looks like.”

“It’s okay,” John said, pulling away a little, “she knows.” He recovered himself enough to raise an eyebrow. “Watching long?”

Elizabeth blushed. “I didn’t mean,” she said, “I—“

“It’s okay,” John said again, but this time to Elizabeth. He looked almost amused, if a little on-edge. There was something almost challenging in his expression, and he tilted his head a little, eyebrows going up. 

He’d told her he didn’t mind her looking, before. But that had been just him, and not doing anything particularly private. This was different, it was very different, and she really needed to pull herself together, bid them goodnight, and walk away. 

But she was so tipsy, and so incredibly turned-on. And his mouth was wet. He knew what she was looking at; he licked his lower lip slowly, watching her watch him. 

“What?” Rodney said, a little sharply, then “Oh. Wait, really?”

“You’re really hot together,” Elizabeth blurted, then covered her mouth with both of her hands. 

“Yeah?” John said, low and raspy. 

Rodney made a confused, desperate sound, hips twitching as John rolled his pelvis up against him, pinning him to the wall with finely-applied pressure. “I,” Rodney said, “I— but— but she’s— is this even—“

John shut him up by pressing his mouth over Rodney’s, taking advantage of his mouth’s openness to shove his way in with no particular care or gentleness. Rodney moaned, eyes clamping shut, and shivered. 

“I, I should be, ah,” Elizabeth said, and John raised his head from Rodney’s, stared at her, and jerked his head toward the end of the hallway where their quarters were. 

“C’mon,” he said. Rodney moaned a little, but it wasn’t a sound of protest. 

“I—“ Elizabeth said, dazed. 

“I’m not gonna offer again,” John said. He pulled away from the wall, towing Rodney by his shirt front, kissed him deeply again, and stumbled a little, laughing. He caught himself, still hanging on to Rodney’s shirt, and pulled him down the hall, looking at Elizabeth, lip caught between his teeth. 

She stood a moment, frozen, then shook herself loose and followed.

 

 

It was insane that he was doing this, John thought, but he stumbled into his quarters and pushed Rodney up against the wall and glanced over at Elizabeth, a little surprised that she’d actually followed. The door hissed shut behind her and she stood, mostly in shadow, arms folded across her chest. 

“This okay?” John asked Rodney. 

“This is nuts,” Rodney said, but immediately followed it up with, “Are you gonna fuck me?”

“If you want,” John said. 

“Fuck yes I do,” Rodney said. 

John glanced over at Elizabeth. “I’m just gonna pretend you’re not there,” he said. “Does that work for you?”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s— yes.”

He’d figured. Good. “Make yourself comfortable, then,” he said, “and do what you want.” He turned back to Rodney. “You wanna come on my face, or come with me inside you?”

Rodney moaned helplessly, twitching against him where their bodies were pressed together. John had never been great at dirty talk, much like any kind of talk, but he had a little practice and God, the feedback was so instantly rewarding, he was definitely better-trained at it than most sorts of talking. Rodney loved dirty talk; Nancy’d been a fan too. John tended to keep it practical, though. He didn’t do so well at the imaginative stuff, it was hard to get it out. 

John kissed him, curled his tongue behind Rodney’s top front teeth as if to pull him closer, then bit gently on his lower lip, pulling on it as he drew away. He dropped his hands to Rodney’s khakis, fumbling to unbutton them— he was sober enough to manage after only a couple of tries— then pushing them down along with the boxers underneath. He curled his fingers in the waistband and dropped smoothly to his knees, pulling them down all the way, then nuzzling in close to Rodney’s freed erection. 

He looked up at Rodney, mouth open, Rodney’s cock just brushing against the side of his jaw. 

“My boss is looking at my naked cock,” Rodney half-whispered, blinking disbelievingly. 

“Yeah, so?” John said. “I think you need to be a little more concerned about what I’m gonna do to it.” 

“Oh Jesus,” Rodney said, clutching at the wall to stay upright as John pulled his head back, his stubbled cheek rubbing along Rodney’s shaft, and hesitated with his mouth open, the cockhead resting just at the corner of his mouth. He darted his tongue out and licked it, and Rodney whimpered. 

Elizabeth made a very quiet, very intense little noise as John opened his mouth and lazily sucked in just the head of Rodney’s cock, circling it with his tongue. Rodney usually made awesome noises when he got his cock sucked, and he didn’t disappoint now, moaning and gasping and even squeaking a little as John made his first attempt at swallowing him down. 

He never succeeded on the first try, nobody ever did, but it always got a great reaction. He pulled back, caressing Rodney’s hips with his hands, pushing him back against the wall to keep him from thrusting in, sucking slowly, sloppily. Rodney was keeping up a steady stream of imprecations, oaths, obscenities, pleas, and incoherent exclamations as John worked, and his hands were white-knuckled around the wall decorations. 

John eyed the way he was holding on. Maybe he wanted to be held down or tied up. It was worth trying, one of these times. Maybe not now, this was already kinky enough, with Elizabeth just at the corner of his vision— she’d sat down, body tightly curled into itself, in John’s desk chair, and was pressed back against the wall, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. He licked idly at Rodney for a moment, watching her from the corner of his eye, and something in her body language told him she was aware of his regard. 

“Yes,” she whispered, a little brokenly, and John grinned without turning his head all the way. He pulled back a little, yanked his t-shirt off over his head, and pressed in close, cheek against the side of Rodney’s shaft, looking up at him until Rodney blinked and looked down. 

“Do you wanna come for me?” John asked, low and husky. Rodney moaned helplessly. “I wanna hear you say it,” John insisted. “Do you want me? C’mon, Rodney, what do you want?”

“I want you to fuck me,” Rodney said, voice tight and desperate. He was really, really turned-on, and John suspected that being bossed around was part of it; on his own he’d never have consented to let someone watch, but he was letting himself feel like John was forcing him, and while John was pretty good at sucking dick, he wasn’t this good. It was getting Rodney really hot. 

“Where do you want me?” John asked, ruthless, but he took one hand and slid it down Rodney’s wet shaft, working the foreskin, making Rodney shudder. 

“In my ass,” Rodney moaned. “Oh God, Sheppard, I’m gonna die.”

John shoved Rodney’s pants down all the way, keeping one hand working his cock, though he had to awkwardly pause and get Rodney’s shoes off. “Get your shirt off,” he said roughly. 

Rodney shivered, and complied, and John grinned up at his complete nakedness, noting how he returned his hands to clutching at those same wall decorations like he’d been fastened there. “Good boy,” John said, and sucked Rodney’s cock back into his mouth. Rodney groaned; John could taste that he was close, but not right on the edge. 

And what did it say about him that he had enough experience at this to tell the difference?

He stood fluidly, grabbed Rodney by the shoulders, and dumped him onto the bed. “Hands and knees,” he said, and Rodney got with the program enough to assume the position. John grabbed the lube out of the nightstand drawer and stood by the bed, slowly unfastening his belt, looking Rodney up and down. 

“You just hang onto that headboard,” he said, “and don’t you dare let go, McKay. You know I’ll give you what you need.”

“God,” Rodney moaned, obediently lacing his fingers around— well, it wasn’t really a headboard, it was more of the weird wall decorations, but John had kind of gotten used to them, and Rodney knew what he meant. “Oh God, Sheppard, I need you to fuck me.”

John laughed, low and gravelly, and slid a slick finger down Rodney’s crease and dipped into his asshole without a pause. “Yeah?” he said. 

“Please,” Rodney begged. 

John slid his finger in, biting his lip, then pulled out and added a second finger. “You really want it,” he said. He unfastened his pants with the other hand, palming his cock through his boxers as he kept up the motion of his hand inside Rodney, crooking his fingers and drawing hoarser and hoarser little cries out of Rodney. 

He leaned over, got a condom out of the drawer, and tore the wrapper open with his teeth so he didn’t have to pull his fingers out of Rodney. He glanced over and Elizabeth was curled forward in the chair, knees tightly together, biting the fingers of one hand and watching avidly. He pretended he hadn’t seen her and looked back down at Rodney. It wasn’t entirely crazy that he was doing this. It was good leverage; she knew he was queer and he knew she was into it. There was no way either of them was ever gonna open their mouths about it. 

He wondered if she’d presented him with the opportunity on purpose. It was incredibly ballsy, but sweet, if she had. He blinked, eased his underwear down his hips, and rolled a condom onto his cock, all with one hand. Rodney made a protesting noise as he pulled his fingers out, but then moaned eagerly as he put the head of his cock against Rodney’s hole instead. 

“Yes,” Rodney groaned, “yes,” louder as John slid in slowly, “yes, oh God, yes.”

“Glad we’re clear on that,” John said, but then as he slid in the rest of the way he groaned through his teeth. “Oh, _fuck_ yes.” Rodney was hot and tight, and John pressed his body right up close, feeling how Rodney’s thighs shook, seeing how his arms trembled as he hung onto the wall with everything he had, sides going in and out like a bellows, pale skin luminous with sweat. 

Rodney groaned and panted and cried out in delicious little sharp shocks of pleasure as John fucked him, hips firm and sleek under John’s hands. Some of his little cries and grunts were words, mostly obscenities and affirmations, spilling like rain-patter as so many of his words did. John let it wash over him, closing his eyes and forgetting where he was as pleasure rose like the tide coming in. 

He was getting close, that visceral almost-tingle running up his spine, collecting in his balls, tightening his fingers and curling his toes. “Rodney,” he panted hoarsely, and pressed his body more firmly against Rodney’s, letting his chest press against Rodney’s back, reaching down and grabbing Rodney’s cock in his hand, “ah, you gonna come for me?”

“Fuck,” Rodney said, throwing his head back. John caught his chin with his other hand, holding his head still and drawing his body into an arch, holding him still to take John deeper, impossibly deeper. Rodney’s eyes stared sightlessly and his muscles all went tight, hard against John’s body where they were pressed together. “Ah! Ah! Fuck! Fuck, yes, Sheppard, ahh!”

Rodney’s whole body clenched as he came long and hard, bucking wildly, grip white-knuckled on the wall in perfect obedience even like this. John was close, but Rodney went limp, slowly collapsing onto the bed, and John held him up only long enough to pull out gently. 

“Fuck,” John said, trembling, right on the edge. He pulled the condom off and closed his sticky hand around his cock. He pumped twice, three times, and then he was coming, all over Rodney’s back, over the perfect globes of his just-fucked ass, over his spread thighs. 

Rodney moaned a little, turning his head to the side, looking up at John and managing a crooked, filthy grin for him. “Fuck, that’s hot,” he panted. 

“Rodney,” John grated out, shuddering hard. His heart was beating so hard it shook him. He slumped forward, catching himself on his other hand, and sucked wind for a moment, blowing like he’d just done a 400-meter sprint with somebody shooting at him. Finally he collected himself enough to sit on the edge of the bed. 

Elizabeth was breathing hard too, and that distinctive flush— oh, she’d come too, for sure. Nothing so crude as sticking her hand down her pants, but she’d managed it somehow. She really was excessively well-bred, and for a moment the irrelevant thought that their families had probably overlapped in the circles of Washington’s powerful elite drifted through John’s mind. She probably didn’t know, though, and didn’t have to; there wouldn’t have been time for her to look it up before they left, he was pretty sure. 

She blinked at him, and he managed a wan half-smile, pulling his underwear and pants back up and fastening them. Now was the time, as the afterglow faded, when people regretted things. John knew that. He knew that was also the best time to wring concessions, too. He’d gotten the trading partner addresses out of the Crone during the afterglow. He knew how to do this. The scary part was that he really wasn’t sure where he’d learned.

“Was it good for you?” he murmured quietly, figuring Rodney was probably down for the count. 

Elizabeth nodded shakily. “I— oh,” she said, visibly collecting herself. “I have to go.”

“Probably best you do,” John said. He pushed himself unsteadily to his feet, retrieved his shirt from the floor. She scrambled to her feet as he approached, but didn’t shrink away, instead giving him a long, calculating look. Her mouth quirked, finally, in a softer expression, and he went to the door with her. 

“See?” he said quietly, leaning on the wall. “I do trust you.”

“You trust me enough to give me enough rope to hang myself,” she answered, but without any sharpness. She laughed. “Obviously I trust you about the same.”

“So now we have a Mexican standoff,” John said, “and we can be sure neither of us would dare hurt the other.” He rubbed his face with the back of his hand. His jaw ached from sucking Rodney’s dick. “But, y’know, I already had all my eggs in your basket. And you knew that.”

“You used to,” she said. “But don’t think I haven’t noticed how popular you are now.”

John tilted his head. He was still breathing hard. This was surreal. But he was getting used to it; this was how the Pegasus Galaxy worked. There was no downtime like there always had been on Earth, even in combat zones. And there were no boundaries. His job was survival, and everything was part of that. “Yeah,” he said, “but don’t think I don’t know how popular you are.” He gave her a half-smile. “I rely on you almost all the time. And I don’t want your job. And I’d do anything for you. I’d do anything for Atlantis. Don’t try to stop me, and we’ll never have a problem again.”

“I’d never question your loyalty,” Elizabeth said, a little sharper, “but I might question your sense.”

“Don’t,” John said. “Listen. I know your credentials. I know what you can do. I had time to look you up. I really doubt you had time to look me up, though, beyond my official record. So I understand how you might still not know what I do. But I do. I know what I can do. My past screw-ups were me knowing I couldn’t succeed and going for the lesser evil. Let’s talk about this tomorrow when we’re both sober. But think on that. I invited you in here tonight on impulse, but by the time it was over I knew about six different reasons why I’d done it.” 

“And I accepted on impulse,” Elizabeth said, “and by the time it was over I knew about six different reasons why I shouldn’t have.”

“And there’s the difference between us,” John said. “And there’s why you don’t trust me. Instinct and impulse don’t work out for you. But they do, for me. Don’t change your methods, but think of that before you judge mine.”

“I can’t believe you guys are still talking,” Rodney said, sitting up shakily. Both of them turned and blinked at him. He was naked, propped on an elbow, the light from the windows spilling beautifully over his smooth skin. John was struck by how beautiful the two of them must have looked in this light, silver from the window and gold from the desk lamp. 

Elizabeth laughed. “I can’t believe it either,” she said. She turned back and, to John’s astonishment, kissed him on the cheek. “Good night. I will talk to you after the hangover abates, tomorrow.”


	11. The Dangers of Politeness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got reallllly long. I was writing it and had in my head that it'd be like, 5k or so. Spent the weekend on it, looked at the word count. Holy crap. That's where my dang weekend went!! So I'm making it a two-parter.  
> Which gives this chapter the dubious distinction of being probably the most heavily-edited portion of this entire deal.
> 
> Picks up just after Sanctuary.  
> Rodney disapproves of John's particularly slutty methods of diplomacy. John has a hard landing. Elizabeth does what she does best, for once, and for once, the military approves. At least, the parts of the military that are totally high on painkillers approve.

John rang Rodney’s door chime three or four times, waiting a long time between, but Rodney never answered. John finally gave up and went down to the control room. Nobody was paying particular attention, so he checked the system-wide life signs detector. Rodney was definitely in his room, and a few moments ago had responded to a radio hail from one of the engineers. So he wasn’t dead or injured or asleep. 

Avoiding John, then.

John leaned on the console nonchalantly as the technician came back from his consultation with Grodin. He kept forgetting the guy’s name. He had a Canadian flag patch on his jacket and sandy hair, so sometimes from the corner of his eye John mistook him for Rodney. So far that hadn’t resulted in anything embarrassing, but it was just a matter of time. John wasn’t too worried, though; one of the perks of this expedition was that everybody was at least as socially awkward as he was, so it really wasn’t hard to brush stuff off. 

“Try it now,” Grodin said, and the tech sat down and looked politely up at John.

“Did you need something, Major?” he asked, though it sounded genuinely polite and not like a brush-off. Though John had learned his lesson with Canadians. Don’t take their politeness for either kindness _or_ weakness. John had mentioned the American involvement in World War One once, casually, in the mess hall, and had barely escaped with his life. 

“Not really,” John said, pushing himself upright. “Whatcha workin’ on?”

The technician leaned forward and prodded at one of the crystals, keeping an eye on his laptop. “Grodin’s got this idea that we can get the interface translated more accurately on our terminals up here if he tweaks the program a bit,” he said absently. 

That sounded beyond John’s ability to help with. Though he knew more Ancient than anybody else, thanks to that weird run-in with the dictionary machine, the Ancient he knew wasn’t particularly useful, being an alphabetical, phonetic list without any definitions. He’d found they made good cuss words, though, when he really needed to swear and have it not be obvious.

“Hey, Chuck,” Grodin said, sounding surprised and pleased, “does that look different to you?” Chuck. That was the guy’s name. 

“It does,” Chuck said, a grin spreading slowly across his face. “Not bad, Peter, not bad at all.”

“Chalk another one up to the control room squad,” Grodin said, bright with satisfaction. 

“Good work, guys,” John said, though he had no idea what they’d fixed. He was kinda used to this with ground crews, though a lot less geeky and a lot more gearhead-y. He turned, half-thinking of going to the mess hall with the excuse of a cup of tea or something, but then he spotted Elizabeth at her desk, frowning intently at her computer, so he went that way instead. 

He leaned in her doorway and she looked up, smiling. It was the nice kind of smile, that encouraged you to smile back, so John did. “Hey,” she said. “Whatcha up to?”

“Avoiding work,” John admitted. There were a bunch of inventory forms he had to sign off on. They’d had to come up with their own forms, to account for non-government suppliers like, oh, the entirety of the Pegasus Galaxy. The quartermaster was a pretty sharp chick, but even she was having trouble figuring out how to make this stuff fit into the normal paperwork’s categories. 

“Oh, I sympathize,” Elizabeth said, rolling her eyes and sitting back in her chair, sinking down with an uncharacteristic slouch. She straightened immediately, though, tapping her fingers on her desk. 

John came in and sprawled in the chair across from her desk. She still watched him, still liked to look at his body when he leaned (her eyes usually ran appreciatively down his waist to his hips and back up), liked to watch him stretch out. John wondered if women felt like this all the time on Earth. It wasn’t unpleasant, it was just a constant reminder of the power dynamic. He was her equal, but not quite.

“Rodney’s not speakin’ to me,” he said, since in this position he could monitor the approach to her office and know nobody could overhear.

“Why the hell not?” Elizabeth asked, but immediately got it, the concern washing out of her face and being replaced with annoyance. “He’s mad about Chaya.”

“I figure,” John said, grimacing, though he laced his fingers together over his stomach in a relaxed and unconcerned gesture. To onlookers, it would look like they were just shooting the shit.

And they were, really. It wasn’t mission-critical that Rodney be sweet to John. 

“He didn’t give you trouble about the Crone,” Elizabeth pointed out, frowning, hands clasped under her chin, elbows propped on the desk. 

“No,” John said, “he was actually pretty nice about that.” He shrugged. “Probably because that was a lot more obviously not for fun. I’m not gonna lie and say Chaya wasn’t fun, but c’mon. A moonlit picnic? I’m not saying I don’t have my smooth moments, but I don’t think I’ve ever kissed someone’s ass like that just for the purposes of romance.”

Elizabeth nodded, frowning even deeper. “You know, John,” she said, “you don’t have to…” She trailed off. Probably because she was too well-bred to actually call him a whore.

“I know I don’t have to,” John said. “There’s a lot of stuff I do that I don’t have to do.” He rolled his neck on his shoulders a little bit. She watched his jaw, or maybe his mouth. He bit his lip and her attention sharpened on his mouth. “But I figure, we’re kind of on a razor’s edge here, and anything I can do to make that razor blade a little bit wider so we don’t fall to our doom is probably worth doing.”

“That’s as may be,” Elizabeth said, “but we really can’t afford to lose you, or have you sustain too much damage. It’s a risk, every time you put yourself in that kind of position.” 

“It’s a risk every time any of us does anything,” John said wearily. _No, I won’t be your pet. You’re jealous too. Jesus._ “That one didn’t exactly pay dividends, but it also turned out to be pretty harmless.”

“Her world didn’t even have any trading partners,” Elizabeth groused.

“Nope.” John sighed. “Ain’t that a kick in the pants.” 

“Well,” Elizabeth said, eyes alive with mischief, “not literally, for once, at least.”

“True,” John said. “True.”

 

 

Maybe Elizabeth was too well-bred to call him a whore, but Rodney wasn’t. John kept his smile imperturbable and led them on foot through the gate, Ford chattering obliviously to him about video games and Teyla looking silently, knowingly from his blank bland face to Rodney’s huffy intermittent scowl. He wished he’d brought antacids, the way his stomach was churning from the effort of not slapping Rodney. Every sly little dig was like another little puncture wound to the esophagus.

They waited on the steps for the doorman to fetch the steward to let them in to meet the leader of the people they were here to try to trade with. This place looked pretty promising: two-story buildings of stone and timber, draft animals and carts rolling through cobblestoned streets, reasonably well-dressed people looking at them with more curiosity than wariness. They had some technology, simple stuff, hand-cranks and such, but some of those light fixtures looked like gas or electric. Which was hopeful.

Teyla knew nothing of these people, save a distant rumor that their pottery was good; the Athosians had mostly traded with them through intermediaries, since they had decent pottery of their own and other sources of the food goods these people were known to grow. 

“I’m hoping for cheese,” John said. 

“I’m hoping for coffee,” Rodney said. 

“I have never encountered coffee anywhere else but your mess hall,” Teyla said. “I fear it may be a forlorn hope.”

“I’d give an awful lot for coffee,” John admitted.

“I’d say you’d put out for coffee, but it seems you’ll put out for pretty much anything,” Rodney said. 

John swung around on his heel. “You mean to tell me if these people have coffee you want me to turn down their crazy priestess lady and preserve my virtue rather than do whatever it takes to get goddamn coffee.” Rodney blinked. “Tell you what, if they do, I’ll tell ‘em to negotiate with _you_.”

“Also,” Teyla said quietly, “if you do not shut up about our negotiation tactics, I will shut you up myself, Doctor McKay.”

Rodney shut up, a little wide-eyed, but John noticed then how Rodney’s eyes slid from John to Teyla and back while his mouth thinned, and inwardly grimaced. Great. He had a jealous boyfriend. Fucking fantastic. 

The door opened, sparing John any more snideness, and he swallowed down stomach acid and grinned at the steward, who was— great— a pretty young woman of about 22, with dark curling hair and brown-gold eyes rimmed delicately in kohl. She was dressed exquisitely in layers of embroidered fabric, trimmed with gold, and a glittering metal belt slung low around her hips. Her thick, dark eyelashes fluttered down to her cheek, then back up as she cast a glance up and down John, then over at Ford, then at Teyla, and finally at Rodney. She looked back to John and smiled coyly.

“I will bring you to a sitting room where you may refresh yourselves,” she said. “We are pleased that you have graced us with your presence. We had heard rumors of a new presence in the Ancestors’ Ring network, seeking alliances, and while at first we were concerned by these rumors, lately the Crone of Tallaria has spoken very highly of you. She says that you are good, fair traders, and…” Her eyes dipped down John again. “Good company.”

“Well,” John said, “she sure did know how to throw a party. I think we came to a good arrangement.” He kept his tone light, kept his eyebrows mostly level, and kept his smile bland. Evidently the Crone wasn’t a gentlewoman, and she kissed and told. Great. 

The woman gestured them in, jangling with gold bracelets as she moved. “She spoke most highly of a medicine that your people know how to make,” she went on. “She told us that it was marvellous proof against the headaches of overindulgence.”

“That it is,” John said. “Maybe that’s why we got along so well. A mutual love of hard partying, and a mutual desire not to suffer the after-effects quite so much. I sure needed those pills the next morning.”

“So we heard,” the woman smiled, eyelashes dipping down against her cheek as she opened another heavy door and gestured them in. John gritted his teeth and tried not to burp as his stomach churned again. Great, now not only Rodney, but the whole _galaxy_ thought he was a whore. He’d better not have to sleep with anybody on this damn planet. 

Maybe he could get Ford to do it. Why did they never go for Ford? He was younger and even prettier. John sulked a little, inwardly, as he rubbed at his sternum in discomfort. Forget coffee, maybe they had Maalox. The chemists on Atlantis had come up with reasonable antacids once their supplies from Earth ran out but they didn’t last very long. And John had run out already.

“I am instructed to offer you refreshment while the Council finishes their morning business so they may meet with you,” the woman said. “They have much to discuss, but your timing is fortuitous, for they will surely have time to speak with you before the afternoon’s session, which will surely be long and boring.”

“That _is_ fortuitous,” John said, pulling his sunglasses off so he could see what was inside the room. It was a luxuriously-furnished lounge room, with narrow windows going nearly floor to ceiling, gauzy curtains floating gently in the breeze, heavy brocade cushions on low couches. The woman gestured them to sit, and went to a delicate wooden table and poured them each a drink from a beautifully-worked ceramic pitcher. She brought the tiny cups over on a gold-embellished wooden tray and knelt gracefully before each of them to offer them the drink. 

They each took one, but John kept his eyes on the woman and smiled warmly rather than drinking. “Should you wish for more cordial, it will be in this pitcher,” she said. “I will go and see to perhaps a sampling of the fruits from our orchards, while you wait. It will not be long.”

She slipped from the room after setting the tray back on the table, and John looked around the room, still not drinking. Teyla tipped the cup up toward her face, sniffing carefully at it. 

“Ah,” she said, “it is a cordial made from omberries, I have had this before, the Uralians make it too. It is quite good.”

“Citrus, though?” Rodney asked, skeptical.

Ford took a sip, rolling it around his tongue with a squint. “Doesn’t taste like it,” he said. “It’s… really sweet.” He swallowed, and smacked his lips. “Not sharp like citrus is.”

Teyla drank as well. “It is sweeter than I recall,” she said, frowning a little. 

John stood and went to the window, pouring his cup out carefully into the bushes below. It was like a ten-foot drop.“I’ve got such bad heartburn already,” he said, “if I drink sweet stuff I’ll puke.” He pushed his fist against his sternum. “Anybody got any antacids or anything? I’m all out of mine.”

Ford shook his head. His cup was empty. Teyla sipped from her cup, looked thoughtful, and set the cup down to dig through her tac vest. John didn’t look at Rodney. 

“I have some,” Rodney said finally, and he heard rustling and Velcro. 

“Thanks,” John said, turning to accept the packet. It was the homemade kind, so he’d probably feel better for about an hour. Well, it was better than nothing, and maybe by then they’d be done here. 

“Take the whole thing,” Rodney said, “I’ll probably be fine.” He looked dubiously into the cup. “If this doesn’t have citrus in it and kill me, that is.”

“It’s probably fine,” John said absently, unwrapping the waxed-paper packet of pills and pulling out his canteen to wash two down. 

“I didn’t know you got heartburn,” Rodney said. “I thought that was just for us mere mortals.” He sipped carefully from his cup.

“Mere mortals,” John said. He swallowed, put his fist to his sternum and winced again, grimacing at the unsettled burning sensation. “Naw, I get it all the time.” _When I’m upset._ “Probably a consequence of my degenerate lifestyle.” 

Rodney frowned down at the cup. “This tastes like cough syrup,” he said, his face telegraphing clearly that he was ignoring John’s comment. 

“Uh,” Ford said suddenly. “I feel weird.”

“Shit,” Teyla said succinctly. “I thought it tasted strange, but told myself I must be mistaken. Major, we have been drugged.”

Rodney ran to the window and spat. Ford looked ashen, dropping his empty cup into the cushions. “God _damn_ it,” John said. Teyla had her hand pressed over her stomach, and carefully set her cup down on the floor, looking shaky. Ford’s eyes rolled and he slid sideways into Teyla’s shoulder. She caught him, but was visibly unsteady herself. 

John grabbed Ford’s hand and felt his pulse. It was strong and steady. “I think it’s just to knock us out,” he said. “I don’t think it’s poison.”

“They can’t be knocking us out for any nice reasons, Major,” Rodney said, returning to sit down on the couch next to Teyla. She rolled her eyes, trying to stay conscious, but then slumped over, entangled with Ford. Rodney looked up at John, mouth slanted. “I probably had about five milligrams of it, whatever it is.”

“And there were probably thirty-five, forty milligrams in those cups?” John said. “Took Ford what, five minutes to react?”

“That’s potent stuff, and fast-acting,” Rodney said. “Nothing good. I wouldn’t discount the possibility that they’ll slip deeper into a coma and maybe die.” He hesitated, swallowed hard, and said, “I mean we.”

“Here,” John said, and handed him his canteen. “Try diluting it. You didn’t have much. Dilute it while you’re still aware enough to swallow safely.”

Rodney nodded, and began to drink in careful, measured gulps. John looked around the room. There was no way to get Ford and Teyla out. He might be able to squeeze through the window himself, but not with his tac vest on. That would mean leaving Rodney here; the windows were definitely too narrow for him. And it would definitely mean leaving Ford and Teyla. He chewed his lip. 

“I’m gonna make a break for the ‘gate,” John said, unclipping his P90. “I can get out that window. You pretend you’re unconscious, even if that stuff doesn’t work, and try to buy time while I get the cavalry.”

Rodney nodded. “I’d never fit out that window,” he said, proving he had as clear a grasp of the situation as John did.

John unzipped the tac vest and stripped it off. He’d bring it with him. He peered from one window, then crossed the room to look at the other, trying to guage which had a clearer path. It was a good ten-foot drop. Rodney was staring at him with huge, tragic eyes. It would take more than he had to meet them. 

“Buy time,” John said. “Just buy time, Rodney. Stay alive, and I’ll get you all out of this.” 

Rodney nodded tightly. John bit his lip. It was hard to leave people behind, but he was their only chance of getting word back to Atlantis in a timely fashion. Their scheduled check-in was almost six hours away. 

John shoved his shoulder into the narrow window, reaching through to grab the outer wall to help pull himself. It was a tight fit. He’d lose buttons. “Nngh,” he said, grabbing the interior windowsill and shoving uncomfortably. 

Rodney’s hand was warm on his shoulder, pushing. “Fuck,” Rodney hissed suddenly. “They’re back!”

“Shit,” John said, “I’m stuck.” He didn’t have the leverage to get through. 

Rodney shoved hard, and John flailed, trying in vain to catch himself. No good; he went tumbling out the window, headfirst since his belt snagged for a second. It was almost worse that it was such a short fall; he didn’t have time to right himself before he was slamming into the ground. He managed to twist so he landed on his shoulder, not his head. He tried to roll as he landed, absorb the force with his back, but the angle was bad. There was a sudden stop, a full-body shock, and a sickening crunch. John rolled, breath knocked away, stars crowding the edges of his vision, and tried to claw himself upright. 

 

 

 

Rodney opened his eyes and sat up on an elbow. Ford and Teyla were leaned against one another, out cold, against the other wall of the small room. It was still daylight; Rodney didn’t think he’d been out long. 

He shoved himself up the rest of the way, crawling across the room to try to shake the others awake. Footsteps sounded and he froze. Better to feign unconsciousness, or wake up and demand answers? He scrambled back to his starting place and tried to arrange himself the same way he had been, closing his eyes just as the door scraped open. 

“You’ll wait here,” a voice said, and stumbling footsteps came into the room. Someone choked off a noise of pain, then hissed slowly, and fabric rustled. Rodney cracked an eye open; someone wearing dark clothes was sliding slowly down the wall, arms bound in front of his body. The door swung shut and Rodney opened his eyes. 

“That didn’t work,” Sheppard said tightly. His arms weren’t tied together, he was clutching his left arm across his chest with his right, hunched in on himself and white as a sheet. 

“Shit,” Rodney hissed, sitting more upright. “Did they shoot you?”

“No,” Sheppard said, “I landed bad.”

“What’s broken?” Rodney asked, cringing. 

“Something in my shoulder,” Sheppard said. He was shaking, hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. 

“Shit,” Rodney said. “I figured you knew how to fall.”

“Not headfirst,” Sheppard said. 

“I thought it was only a couple feet,” Rodney said. 

“Like ten,” Sheppard said. He hissed, breath coming fast and shallow. “Fuck.”

“Is it bad?” Rodney asked. 

“Yeah,” Sheppard said, and that was a really bad sign, that he wasn’t being snippy or rolling his eyes or anything. He was just sitting, hunched and still, breathing harsh and shallow and desperate with his mouth open and his eyes closed. 

 “Well,” Rodney said, hands hovering nervously, “what do we do?”

Sheppard slid a look his way, squint-eyed. His face was sheet-white except a stark line of red where something had scratched across his cheekbone. “You got anything?”

Rodney patted himself down. Oh. They’d taken his tac vest. He hadn’t had much in there, just some ibuprofen, but it would probably have helped. And some Powerbars. And a wound dressing. Spare ammo. Toilet paper. He went through his cargo pockets. “Um,” he said. A pad of Post-Its. A binder clip. Seventy-three cents (American). “Why do I have loose change in my pocket?”

“Vending machine,” Sheppard managed tightly, and grinned at him, but Rodney could see it was fake and meant to be reassuring. Sheppard was still trembling. 

“I got nothing,” Rodney said, and sat up on his knees, shuffling over next to Sheppard. “Let me see.”

“Nothin’ you can do,” Sheppard said tightly. 

“Let me look anyway,” Rodney said. “Are you bleeding?”

“If it’s bleeding I’m in trouble,” Sheppard said. Rodney very carefully unbuttoned the top few buttons of Sheppard’s overshirt, and pushed it over delicately. Sheppard’s t-shirt was uninformative, but removing it would be much more difficult. Barely breathing, Rodney put his fingers gently against Sheppard’s shoulder, where the neck came in, running them delicately along. He could feel how hot the skin beneath was, and grimaced as he came over to where the collarbone came in. It was definitely not shaped quite right. Sheppard hissed, and Rodney looked over to see that the man’s eyes were squeezed shut. 

“Yeah,” Rodney said, “broken.”

“Collarbone for sure,” Sheppard said. “Hopefully it’s only broken in one place.” He must have tried to move, because he made a tiny, horrible sound and shivered under Rodney’s fingers. Rodney put his hand on Sheppard’s chest, to hold him up so he didn’t fall over, and Sheppard leaned on him and struggled not to cry out. Finally Sheppard grated, “Shoulder too. Definitely shoulder.”

“It doesn’t look dislocated,” Rodney said hesitantly, but pushed the overshirt farther over. No, Sheppard’s shoulder wasn’t quite shaped right either. “Well… maybe.”

“Fuck,” Sheppard said. “Separated.” He opened his eyes and looked at Rodney. “Kinda… grates. Couple broken bones probably.”

Rodney knew Sheppard had some kind of insanely high pain tolerance— he’d been so nonchalant about cracked ribs— but this seemed worse. “You’ve been injured worse than this, though,” Rodney said with a nervous laugh.

“Sure,” Sheppard said, gingerly letting his head rest against the wall. “Lots.” He grimaced, breathed out slowly, bit his lip. Rodney was suddenly aware of how close he was sitting, his hand still resting across Sheppard’s chest, the other man’s heart beating fast and shallow against his palm. 

“What do you suppose they’ll do to us?” Rodney asked, trying very hard not to sound wobbly and panicky. 

Sheppard angled his gaze over to Ford and Teyla. “They still alive?”

Rodney nodded; he’d gotten that far before he’d heard the footsteps. “Just out cold.”

“Good sign,” Sheppard said, and closed his eyes again. Fascinated, Rodney realized that he could _feel_ the man collecting himself; deliberately slower breaths, a general recentering of balance. His heart even slowed a little, or evened out at least. What must it be like, to have that kind of control over one’s body? Rodney knew about mind over matter, sure he did, but he’d never had much luck at getting the meat shell his brain animated to do much of anything he told it to. 

“It looks bad,” Rodney said quietly, and very carefully pulled Sheppard’s overshirt back into place, sliding away back onto his heels. 

“Six, eight weeks recovery time,” Sheppard said, “if I don’t need surgery. Seen this before.” 

“Has it happened to you?” Rodney asked. 

“No,” Sheppard admitted. He blew out carefully through his mouth, still working on slowing his breathing. “But I’ve seen it.”

Rodney couldn’t stop himself. He reached up and un-stuck Sheppard’s wet hair from his forehead, pushing it back. Sheppard’s pupils dilated as he focused on Rodney instead of blank middle distance. It was fascinating, Rodney thought, seeing it in good light at close range for the first time— much of the reason Sheppard’s eyes were such an indeterminate color was that the outer parts of the iris were a different shade, and as the tiny muscles changed the pupil’s shape different-colored parts of them showed. At the moment they were dark gray. 

Neither of them said anything, and after a moment Sheppard closed his eyes again. “I’ve seen a lot of shit,” he said quietly. Tightness flitted across his facial muscles. 

Rodney was so distracted that he didn’t hear the footsteps coming until too late to do more than shove backwards, winding up sitting on his butt against the far wall in the narrow room. Sheppard couldn’t turn his head easily, so he rolled his head sideways to look warily up at the door. Rodney didn’t have time to go back to feigning unconsciousness. 

“I knew he didn’t have a full dose,” the man at the door said, shoving it open. “Get the other two, we’ll let them go. But these two, we’ll have to hold.”

“You mean,” one of the other men said, then bit it off. “Yeah.” He laughed, came in and grabbed Ford around the chest, dragging him out backward so his heels scraped the ground. 

“You’re letting them go?” Rodney asked. 

“Yes,” the first man said. “They passed the test. They’ll wake up free, with one of our representatives to speak with them. But you, you did not abide by the rules of hospitality.”

“He was sick!” Rodney said indignantly, pointing at Sheppard. “So I was getting some medicine for him, and by the time I sat to drink mine, Ford was already feeling the effects. Can you blame us for not drinking it too once we saw what was happening to the others?”

“You would endanger us by coming here sick?” The man turned to Sheppard, face angry.

“It’s indigestion,” Sheppard said mildly, deceptively calm. “It’s hardly contagious. I just had heartburn.” 

“This is ridiculous!” Rodney said. “You think we would want anything to do with people who would poison us just to test us?” Another man had come and was dragging Teyla out. Sheppard’s jaw was tight, though whether from pain or from the desire to leap to Teyla’s defense, Rodney couldn’t tell. 

“Many of the rumors we have heard of your people have been disturbing, so a test was in order,” the man said. He surveyed Sheppard. “So does this man have a contagion or not?”

“No,” Sheppard said, “I don’t. I have a broken collarbone and a separated shoulder and heartburn. None of those are contagious.”

“Well,” the man said. “Only one thing to do.” And a second man came in, handed the first a black bag, and approached Rodney. Rodney recoiled nervously, wondering what the bag was for. It came down over his head. 

“Shit,” he heard Sheppard say bleakly. 

 

 

Elizabeth held her breath, careful to maintain her dignified and composed appearance. This was it, two days of careful negotiations, working to allay rumors, painstakingly building trust, all the while with Lt. Ford and Sgt. Bates screaming in her ear to start a war. But she knew, in her bones, these people would kill their hostages rather than give them up. And the unworried serenity of the head negotiator’s face told her in no uncertain terms that Sheppard and McKay were definitely not anywhere they’d find them unaided. 

“Yes,” the negotiator said, her features broadening in a cautious smile, “everything is as you have said. You have dealt with us fairly, Elizabethweir.”

“We have not traveled so far in our explorations for the purpose of making enemies,” Elizabeth said. 

“You have not made enemies of us,” the negotiator said, and Elizabeth inwardly let out a breath. “The Council has accepted your terms. Your people will be returned to you and we will enter into trade with your people, as equals.”

Elizabeth let herself smile widely, and the negotiator clasped her forearm, the way these people did to seal a deal. She came before the Council, then, and gave them a fine-sounding speech about cooperation, and then waited with Teyla in a clearing near the Stargate, everyone all in finery and an air of celebration.

The negotiator was talking to a man who looked uneasy, and she frowned, deeper and deeper, and finally Elizabeth made herself walk over and ask if there was a problem. 

The negotiator looked up with a smile. “Oh,” she said, but it was a patently false smile, nervous, “no problem, no. It’s just, one of your people seems to have injured himself attempting to escape. They assure me it is not serious, but it has caused a delay. He did not believe us that we meant him no harm.”

“Ah,” Elizabeth said, a stab of worry going through her. Which one? But it didn’t matter, losing either of them was too horrifying to contemplate. She hadn’t told the negotiators the names of her missing people, hadn’t let on that they had any particular status. 

“These men are important to you,” the negotiator said. Throughout it had been implied that they thought one of them— probably John, since they had described him as ‘pretty’— was Elizabeth’s lover, though that seemed to imply a much different power relationship than it normally would in most Earth cultures. Elizabeth had demurred rather than risk making some other kind of statement she didn’t understand the implications of in this strange place.

“The people who came on this expedition are few,” Elizabeth said. “I am very close with each of them. To lose even one is a devastating blow to me personally.” She let herself look anxious. “Is he badly injured?”

“No,” the negotiator said, “no, I do not believe so. The healers say they will treat him before we return him to you.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Elizabeth said. “As you know from our preliminary trade agreement, we have very skilled healers indeed, and we just would like to see our friend again.”

The negotiator looked at the man, who shrugged eloquently but a little cringingly, and he went off with no further comment. 

 

Sheppard. It was Sheppard who was injured. Rodney looked haggard and drawn, eyes bright and fierce as he helped Sheppard out of the wagon they’d been brought in. Sheppard was unsteady, arms wrapped tightly around his torso and face sheet-white as Rodney solicitously supported him. 

“John,” Elizabeth said in dismay, and came forward toward them. 

“Oh thank God,” Rodney said, seeing her, and his face was gratifyingly bright, relieved and happy. John blinked sightlessly, obviously light-headed. 

“Dial the alpha site,” Teyla said. Elizabeth went to take John’s arm to hold him up. 

“Nononono,” Rodney said urgently, wide-eyed, “don’t touch him on that side, he’s all broken bones, didn’t they tell you?”

John blinked, face screwed up in pain, and said, “Elizabeth?”

“Yes, John,” she said. “We’re taking you home.”

“Thank God,” he said, and without warning went limp. 

 

 

“He’ll need surgery,” Beckett said solemnly. “A lot of it.”

“But will he be all right afterward?” Elizabeth asked. Rodney was sitting beside her, refusing to leave. 

Beckett looked hesitant. “He might be,” he said. “But it’s quite possible he’ll never regain full strength in that arm. There’s quite a bit of tissue damage, and some nerve issues as well.”

“Would it have been better if he had been treated sooner?” Elizabeth asked. 

“Aye, of course,” Beckett said. “Much of the damage was caused by the inflammation as the injury went untreated.”

Elizabeth nodded, wrung with guilt. All of her pleasure in the trade agreement, in the delicate negotiations, in the job well done, had fallen by the wayside; they’d have been better off sending a heavily-armed jumper through as soon as AR-1 missed their check-in, and blasting them to pieces to get John back as quickly as possible. But she hadn’t known. She hadn’t known. And he’d suffered for days, while she hadn’t known.

 

 

John woke, groggy. He wasn’t sure where he expected to be, but it wasn’t where he was. He was in an infirmary bed, the kind that tilted so you weren’t lying flat. He was swathed in bandages, tubes taped in his nose, an IV in his hand. He kicked his feet a little, locating them— yep, they were in the right place, and still attached, and had all their toes. 

Atlantis infirmary, his brain supplied, recognizing the odd bronze ceiling. He tried to turn his head but it felt weird, so he abandoned the attempt, and just stared blankly at the ceiling a moment. His shoulder was missing, he decided; a chunk of his shoulder and chest and back, on the left side, down as far as his elbow. Everything was numb, hollow, with a distant feeling of pressure. 

He remembered that it should hurt. There had been an awful lot of pain for an awful long time. He could remember that, now. It had been bad, overwhelmingly bad, and had stayed bad a while. 

 “John!” Spoken softly, a woman’s voice. Nancy? No. He still couldn’t turn his head. She stood where he could see her and he blinked up at her. Elizabeth. He moved his mouth to say it, though he wasn’t sure if it worked. 

She took his right hand, free on top of the blanket, and held it between both of hers. “I’m sorry, John,” she said. “I— they didn’t tell me you were injured, so I— if I’d known, I would’ve let them go in guns blazing and rescue you right away. I didn’t know.”

John blinked at her again. “What was the hold-up?” he asked, working hard to enunciate intelligibly. He wasn’t sure if it worked. Elizabeth ducked her head. 

“I negotiated with them,” she said. “I realized it was based on misunderstandings, and I took time and dug down to root them out, came to an agreement with them, made an alliance— it took two days, two days I didn’t know that you didn’t have.”

“‘m I dead?” John asked, genuinely puzzled. 

“What? Um, no,” Elizabeth said. 

“Wha’ you mean, then, days I didn’t have?” John was still puzzled. He wasn’t sure what this was about. He rather suspected it would be obvious if he weren’t pretty clearly still _really_ drugged. 

“Beckett explained that your injury would’ve had a much better prognosis if you’d been treated sooner,” Elizabeth said. 

John struggled to get both of his eyes pointing at her. They hadn’t cut his arm off, he could tell it was there because the IV was in it. “It’s okay,” he said, a little vague but purposeful. 

Elizabeth gave him a long, lingering look that it was utterly beyond him to parse. “I’ll talk to you when you’re conscious,” she said. “I just wanted to apologize for how long it took to get you back. And tell you how glad I am you’re safe now.”

“Okay,” he said, and smiled at her. That was nice of her. What a nice lady. 


	12. Pillow Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The conclusion, at last. It seemed like a natural stopping place. One last frozen bit of John thaws out under Rodney's slightly-obnoxious influence.  
> Smut.
> 
> Oh! I was just reading back over this and realized I forgot a chunk. Apparently it made sense without said chunk, but I did intend to put it in. So I've added that in, now.
> 
> Warnings: non-explicit discussion of past non-con, underage.  
> The current situation could potentially be seen as dub-con, since John is on painkillers, but I had intended for it to be clear that John's judgement isn't impaired at all, he's just much more relaxed than usual. Apologies if anyone takes it any other way, but in my intent, John's consent in this chapter is in no way dubious.

Two days later John dragged himself up to Elizabeth’s office, since she didn’t seem to be in a hurry to come find him. He remembered the conversation pretty clearly, but he’d also had a chance to ask Beckett, and Ford, what had gone on. So he thought maybe he had a little more of an understanding of what Elizabeth had been apologizing for.

He was weak and sick-feeling still, and pretty downhearted about the prognosis for his shoulder, but none of that was really Elizabeth’s business, or fault. But it took him far longer than it should have, even with the help of the transporters (only using them lightened his mood a bit— _transporters_! It still seemed like magic), for him to drag himself up to her office.

Rodney was in the control room, badgering Chuck and Grodin about something. He hadn’t come to see John in the infirmary, not while John was awake anyway. Things were probably awkward between them. They’d talked too much while in captivity, and John knew he said regrettable things when he was hurt like that. The pain overlaid all those memories with a sort of haze, and he wasn’t sure what he’d actually said and what he’d just thought. But it was still probably awkward.

Rodney didn’t see him, caught up in whatever he was doing, so John waited until he caught his breath a little, then went over the causeway to Elizabeth’s office. She was in there— good, he wasn’t up to walking back down and then back up again later— and looked up as he entered. 

“Major Sheppard,” she said, and her smile looked genuine. “You’re up and about.”

“Yeah,” he said, for want of anything cleverer. He laughed at himself. “I guess. I’m real dopey still.”

“Sit down,” Elizabeth said, concerned. 

He levered himself carefully, gingerly down into the chair, and rubbed at his face. “I hear we got some good stuff out of the deal,” he said.

“You could say that,” Elizabeth said. She looked guilty. “Listen, I tried before—“

“I got it,” John said. “And no, I think you did the right thing.” 

She stared at him a moment, blank, then looked gentler. “Beckett says your injury is much more serious because of the delay in treating you.” He realized she thought he didn’t know that.

“Sure,” he said, “and I was pretty fucking miserable for three days with no painkillers or anything, yeah. But I still think you did the right thing.” 

“Really,” she said, eyebrows curving. 

“Yes really,” he said, a little annoyed. “What, you think I’d’ve wanted you to come in guns blazing, start another war, alienate another quarter or so of the galaxy, and probably get me killed? I mean, it’s probably what I’d’ve done in your place, sure, but that’s because I can’t negotiate for shit. My idea of diplomacy is the Chicken Dance.”

Elizabeth leaned back, folding her arms across her chest. “Really,” she said. “If, say, they’d taken Teyla and Ford, and freed you and McKay, you’d really have come back here and told me to go negotiate with them.”

“No,” John snorted. “Of course not. I’d’ve flipped my lid and had a temper tantrum. And then you would’ve yelled at me and I’d’ve yelled at you and you’d have yelled some more and since you’re good at arguing, and also because by then I’d’ve figured out I couldn’t just go straight back there with more guns, I’d’ve told you as obnoxiously as possible to go ahead and have it your way and be it on your head etcetera, and then I’d’ve had to eat crow when you did it and it worked.” 

Elizabeth laughed despite herself, swallowed it down, and sat forward, arms still crossed. “Are you still high?” she asked. 

“No,” John answered. 

“You really mean that,” she said. 

“I do,” John answered. “I have no training in negotiation. All my training is in getting in there and getting out. That’s because they only called my team if negotiation was impossible. So I don’t have any background in that shit.” 

Elizabeth leaned an elbow on the desk, her cheek in her hand. “I don’t think I understand your criteria,” she said. “I don’t have a handle on you, John. You have motivations I don’t understand. And understanding people’s motivations is my entire job.”

“I don’t think I’m that complicated,” he said, uncomfortable. She was giving him one of those piercing looks, a little absently— like she was focusing her attention on seeing through him, instead of looking at him. 

“I suppose not,” she said. Her gaze went sharper, then she looked away and fidgeted with her pen. “So you think I did the right thing. Hm!”

“I can’t believe you’re that surprised about it,” John said. He gingerly rolled his head on his neck, until it twinged, then gave up on stretching. “I mean, I didn’t have a very nice time in that cell for three days but, hell, at least they didn’t torture us.”

“I suppose,” Elizabeth said, then suddenly looked up at him again. “Oh.” She looked shocked. 

“That was in my file, huh?” John made a tight half-non-smile. “How much detail? And just the one time, or did they have the whole sordid history?”

“You haven’t read your own file?” Elizabeth asked. 

“Ahh, I don’t have to see it, Dottie,” John said dismissively. “I _lived_ it.”

Elizabeth laughed again. “Was that a Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure reference?”

“It was a good movie,” John said mildly, somewhat impressed. It had been pretty obscure. He’d worked his way through a lot of obscure movies in Antarctica. “They should let Tim Burton just do whatever the fuck he wants more often.”

Elizabeth laughed, looking down at her pen again. “Yeah,” she said. “Um, your file only mentioned one incident.”

“Good,” John said. “Then we’ll go with that.”

“But you were tortured,” she said. 

“Well,” John said. “It was apparently standard operating procedure.” He was on edge. It had very nearly been a big international incident, because his captors had videoed it, intending to publicize it on the Internet. And he knew the video had survived, because the CO he had most despised had referred to it. And so he knew, somewhere, buried in various layers of confidentiality, there was that video file. He’d never seen it, but he remembered looking straight into the camera— a cheap camcorder on a rickety tripod— remembered giving his name, remembered— in a haze of terrified adrenaline— grinning at it and saying “Hi, Mom!” And if Elizabeth had seen it, he’d probably crawl under the desk and die. There were things he needed kept separate in little boxes, and the things that had happened to him in Afghanistan were in their own special lead-lined box with the lock welded shut. 

But she just looked at him, thoughtful and sympathetic, and said, “I suppose with that kind of background, it puts spending three days in a room with bread and water into perspective.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Even with two broken bones.” He stood up. “I guess I should be glad there are no car batteries in the Pegasus Galaxy.”

“I wouldn’t discount that somebody’s discovered the method, though,” Elizabeth said. 

“No,” John said thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t either.” 

 

 

 

Rodney stopped by Elizabeth’s office after seeing Sheppard’s hair go by over the top of a console. From the heading and direction, he could surmise the man was coming from Elizabeth’s office. From the velocity, it seemed Sheppard was at least walking in a straight line, if not quite as quickly or bouncily as he normally did. 

But he was gone before Rodney could get out from under the console. Rodney pushed himself up, not exactly disappointed— they had spent three harrowing days in one another’s company, to be sure, and it was possible John was tired of Rodney’s company, as people tended to become after long exposure. But it would be nice to spend some time with Sheppard where the man wasn’t incoherent with pain that Rodney was helpless to ease at all. 

He contented himself with wandering into Elizabeth’s office. She’d told him she expected Sheppard to be upset with her at taking the long way around rescuing them. He supposed that’s what they’d been talking about, then. He really didn’t think Sheppard would be angry, was the thing, but he could be wrong. He hadn’t heard any yelling, but it was likely Sheppard was still too injured to get very worked up.

“Hi,” Elizabeth said, looking up from her computer. 

Rodney dropped into the chair across her desk. “So, was he mad?” He jerked his head in Sheppard’s approximate trajectory. 

“No,” Elizabeth said. “He seemed pretty clear-headed about the whole thing.” She smiled with some private amusement. 

“Well,” Rodney said awkwardly, “good.” 

“He seemed to think that spending three days, injured, inadequately fed, in an unfurnished, uncomfortable room with only you for company was pretty mild relative to other times he’s been a prisoner of war,” Elizabeth said with an eloquent eyebrow raise. “So I suppose we can comfort ourselves with the comparison.”

“Other times— when else has Sheppard been captured?” Rodney asked. 

Elizabeth smiled mysteriously. “Well,” she said, “so far, none, in Pegasus.”

Rodney stared at her. “What do you mean?” he asked. 

“I can’t divulge details of his personnel file,” Elizabeth said. “If you want to know more, you’d have to ask him yourself.”

 

 

 

It was actually fairly difficult to hack into the personnel files of the expedition members. Rodney wasn’t actually in charge of the network security protocols, and while he was no slouch at hacking, neither was Grodin, who _was_ in charge of the network security protocols. It took him three days, during which he didn’t see much of anybody since he was holed up in his lab catching up on the previous week’s work anyway, but he finally managed to get read-only access. He knew it wouldn’t last, so he grabbed a handful of files, including Elizabeth’s entire record, Sheppard’s entire folder, and Zelenka’s. He also grabbed his own, because, well, inquiring minds. 

He closed the link before it was discovered, and erased his tracks, then settled down on the balcony with a cup of coffee, a Powerbar, and his ill-gotten gains. 

He discovered Elizabeth’s birthday, which was quite soon. Worth filing that little tid-bit away. He skimmed her file, found nothing particularly interesting— well, she was the only one who had both read and write access to these files, so she was perfectly capable of sanitizing her own record if she saw fit— and closed out of it, bored. Diplomacy, yadda yadda, he’d known that, and he’d already poked around finding things out about her when they’d first crossed paths at the SGC. So, no surprises.

He perused his own file, finding a few interesting comments in his evaluations, but nothing particularly juicy. Zelenka’s file he also already knew intimately, so he wasn’t sure why he’d bothered. 

That left Sheppard’s, and he hesitated, oddly, before opening it. Despite the fact that he’d had the man’s dick up his ass, he hardly knew him. He’d had the man’s blood on his face, on his hands; he’d held him while he screamed in pain, had ejaculated on the man’s face, but literally all he knew about him was from Elizabeth’s offhand comments, a couple of sneers from Sumner, and a few things the man himself had let drop. Something about Sheppard didn’t invite prying. And opening this folder felt like an invasion of privacy. 

Which wasn’t something that had ever bothered Rodney before. So he went ahead.

Sheppard was younger than he was, by just under two years. Born in Indiana, of all places. Rodney wasn’t sure why that seemed surprising. Bachelor’s degree from— _Stanford_? Really high GPA too. Jesus. And a list of awards and commendations as long as Rodney’s arm. Most of them for combat-related things. 

He hadn’t realized what he was really looking for until he found it. There. Just a quick line, but descriptive. Involved in recovery operation in Afghanistan, piloting helicopter, damaged by fire from encircling Taliban-allied troops, ditched. Lost two crew members in the crash, the rest captured along with the six surviving Army personnel they were trying to recover. In enemy hands for slightly over 36 hours. Subjected to water deprivation, moderate beatings, and interrogation with aid of electric-shock devices. Sustained mild to moderate injuries: sprained ankle, cracked shoulder blade, first-degree burns to both legs, second-degree electrical burns to chest and thighs, cracked two molars from jaw muscle convulsions. Cited for several awards for bravery, conduct under fire, and several witnesses attested to his actions to protect a younger serviceman from torture. No awards given except a Purple Heart. 

Rodney sat back in his chair, thinking suddenly of the obsessive way Sheppard always brushed his teeth every night, the way he always let his coffee cool to lukewarm before he drank it, his occasional complaints, always rubbing the same side of his jaw. He’d said he had bad teeth, and Rodney had needled him; they looked fine, and weren’t Americans supposed to have good teeth? Sheppard hadn’t ever really answered him. 

No, Sheppard wasn’t likely to enjoy being tied up in bed, Rodney concluded, and closed his laptop.

“There you are.” A voice made him jump almost out of his chair, and he dropped his mug. Fortunately it was metal, and empty. Sheppard scooped it up, then laughed as he lost his balance and staggered a step, catching himself nonchalantly against the railing. Rodney never went near that railing, they were a hundred feet up at least and the railing was only waist-high. He wasn’t afraid of heights, but there was phobia and then there was rational cautiousness. 

“Jesus,” Rodney yelped, “don’t plummet to your doom!” He rescued the coffee cup and grabbed Sheppard’s good arm and pressed him firmly down into the chair. Partly to cover his own guilt and shock at almost being caught. 

Sheppard laughed, but sat obediently. “You missed supper,” he said. “Three days in a row. And the city’s not even sinking. I checked.”

“I had a lot to catch up on,” Rodney said. He looked at his watch. “Shit! I _did_ miss dinner.”

“I grabbed a couple of those prepackaged meals,” Sheppard said. 

“They’re not the same as real MREs,” Rodney said glumly. Their dwindling stock of MREs had been carefully hoarded, and the few remaining were valuable trade items— too valuable to actually eat. Rodney’d had to give them up. But the mess hall staff had mastered vacuum sealing, and had come up with a few reasonable MRE replacements of their own. Of course, they were made with all-Pegasus food items, and so lacked some of the homey, industrial, olive/beige charm of the military-issued ones. And their outer packaging was all made from fabric, stamped cheerfully with a cute design of a winged horse that one of the Marines had drawn. A Pegasus. They were sometimes called Peg-R-Ees by the Marines. 

“Yeah but I got you beastloaf and sweet-not-tatoes,” Sheppard said. 

“I love beastloaf,” Rodney said, perking up. 

“I know you do,” Sheppard answered, smirking. Of course he knew.

 

 

They wound up picnicking in Sheppard’s quarters, sitting on his bed. “Started physical therapy today,” Sheppard said, and Rodney knew from the stumble earlier and from the fact that he was volunteering information that Sheppard was on pretty heavy painkillers. 

“Already,” Rodney said. 

“Yeah,” Sheppard answered. He had his back to the headboard, propped up on a pillow and slouching a bit as he ate. His arm was still strapped across his chest in a pale blue infirmary-issued sling, but he had his plate held easily in the bad hand. “Hurts like a bitch,” he added finally. “Can’t support weight, but Beckett’s starting to check range of motion stuff and he seemed pretty hopeful.”

“That’s good,” Rodney said. 

“Even with the worst possible prognosis,” Sheppard said, “I’ll still be able to go out in the field, so, I’m pretty pumped at that. Just, a long annoying time to get back up to strength.”

“Yeah,” Rodney said. “Well, in the meantime, there’s a lot of the city to explore. I’ve spent some of my free time going over the maps.” Not lately; he’d been spending it hacking personnel records. But a bit ago, he had, so it’d be easy to pull that out and wow Sheppard with it. 

“Yeah,” Sheppard said, perking up a little. “That’d be cool.”

“Just… gotta hope we don’t find anything _else_ truly horrifying.” Rodney crammed the rest of the beastloaf in his mouth, wondering absently what he’d do when they ran out of ketchup. There really weren’t any tomatoes in the Pegasus Galaxy. 

“Yeah,” Sheppard said. He was wordier than usual when drugged, but that didn’t seem to apply to right now. Though he wasted a lot of time by never speaking when his mouth was full, which generally allowed Rodney to make numerous conversational points and still finish in time to steal his dessert while Sheppard was still trying to make conversation and eat his entree non-simultaneously. 

Rodney refrained from stealing Sheppard’s dessert today, however, out of deference to the fact that Sheppard not only was injured, but also had brought him dinner, which he otherwise might have had to forgo. Also, his was the not-apple thing and Rodney’s was the not-quite-but-almost chocolate thing, and thus vastly superior. 

“I thought maybe you were a little tired of my company after those three days,” Rodney said, when he’d licked all of the not-chocolate from the plastic wrapper. The chemistry department could make plastic but it was easiest if they recycled every scrap, so Peg-R-Ees were habitually rewrapped in their fabric wrappings and deposited in a bin near the transporter on the Chem department’s level. 

Sheppard quirked his eyebrows. “Nah,” he said. “You were good company. Sorry if I whined a lot.”

“You were kind of ridiculously stoic,” Rodney protested.

Sheppard gave him a skeptical look. “I bit through your shirt,” he said. “I don’t think I was fooling anyone.” When their captors had moved them, in a jolting cart, Sheppard had wound up with his face buried in Rodney’s midsection, teeth gritted in the black hood and Rodney’s shirt, biting down to stop screaming, and when they’d arrived, there had been holes in the hood and the shirt.

“I don’t know how I’m gonna mend that one,” Rodney said thoughtfully. “Patch it, I suppose.” They were all getting pretty good at basic sewing— well, most of them were. Rodney was fine at it but usually managed to guilt someone else into doing it because he was so busy and important. Sometimes Kusanagi darned his socks. But Sheppard did a lot of the heavy-duty sewing. He had a good eye for it and apparently had already known how to sew before coming on this expedition. He’d taught a lot of the Marines, Rodney had found out. 

“I can fix it,” Sheppard said, which was what Rodney had been counting on. “Put it in my laundry bag, I’ll do it with my next batch.”

“Okay,” Rodney said happily. Sheppard was packaging up his Peg-R-Ee debris, and Rodney had the sudden happy, hopeful thought that maybe Sheppard intended to seduce him. Which would be nice, they hadn’t slept together in ages. Not since— _nngh_ , Rodney squirmed as his dick stirred just thinking about it— the incident with Elizabeth. 

Oh right, that was because Rodney hadn’t been speaking to him after the Ascended whore incident. Well, Rodney thought, watching Sheppard lick his fingers, bygones. Sheppard really was incredibly hot. Even in baggy PT sweats, a black t-shirt and much-darned black sweat socks, he was slouched appealingly, the sling pulling the shirt across his torso to reveal the tight line of his belly.

He caught Rodney looking, and blinked at him, dropping the Peg-R-Ee bundle off the edge of the bed. “What?”

“So, um,” Rodney said, gesturing absently between them, “this was a ploy to get me in your bed, right?”

Sheppard looked surprised. “What?”

“You brought me food,” Rodney said. “Now we fuck. Right?”

“Oh,” Sheppard said, and he wasn’t that good an actor; he was genuinely surprised. “Hey, sure, we could do that.”

“Wait, that wasn’t what this was all about?” Rodney asked suspiciously. Why else would Sheppard hunt through the mediocre other Peg-R-Ee offerings to bring him his favorite one, with the almost-chocolate thing in it?

“I just thought you’d be hungry,” Sheppard said, “and wanted to make sure you weren’t mad at me about anything.”

“Well,” Rodney said, a little huffy as he gathered his dignity, “if I _was_ mad at you, I wouldn’t be now.” 

Sheppard sat forward and caught him, pulling him closer with his one good arm. “Good,” he said, and took his mouth. Rodney kicked off his shoes and went with him, wriggling until he was lying half on top of Sheppard, hands up under his shirt, grinding his erection down into his hip. 

“Um,” Sheppard said after a little while, and Rodney was too busy looking at his kiss-swollen mouth to pay attention to what he was saying for a minute, “thing is, um, I’m on a lot of meds so, um,” and it sank in and Rodney realized Sheppard wasn’t even hard yet. 

“So what, exactly?” Rodney asked, suddenly chilled. 

“So, I’m really into this,” Sheppard said, “but my, you know, not everything _cooperates_ when, when I’m, you know, drugged.”

“Are you saying you can’t get it up?” Rodney asked, alarmed. 

“I can eventually,” Sheppard said, defensive. “But I can’t… I kind of can’t get off.” 

“Really?” Rodney was alarmed. He’d never been hurt that badly. He didn’t know that. “Is that usual, or is something wrong?”

“It’s usual,” Sheppard said, squirming uncomfortably. 

“Like, no matter what?” Rodney asked. 

“I kind of can’t feel things enough,” Sheppard said, even more uncomfortable. “Not like, numb, but like, far away. And I can’t keep— can’t pay attention long enough. I kind of, forget what I’m doing, and then it kind of goes away on its own, and I can’t, you know, get off.”

“That sucks,” Rodney said honestly, and reined himself in a little. “So um, should I, should we stop?”

“No,” Sheppard said, and pulled him down again, doing filthy things with his tongue inside Rodney’s mouth. Rodney was really hard now, enough so that he was considering just rubbing off on Sheppard, but this was so unusual— it was daylight, neither of them had anywhere they had to be, nobody was going to bother them, and Sheppard was so deliciously lax and lazy— it seemed a shame not to take their time. 

Rodney put his hand down and did his best, through Sheppard’s track pants. He wasn’t particularly hard, but after some careful attention, Rodney managed to coax him about halfway up. This was going to be time-consuming. 

“I got an idea,” Sheppard murmured. 

“Yeah?” Rodney asked, hopeful. He was really horny, but he didn’t just want a quickie. He wanted to lose himself to it for a while, build up slow to a really good orgasm. The pipes needed to get cleaned out, so to speak. 

“You should fuck me,” Sheppard said, and Rodney’s mind went blank for a minute. He’d offered, once, and Sheppard had been super weird about it, tense and tight-jawed and strange until Rodney had fixed it by begging to get fucked instead. He’d just figured that was something Sheppard wouldn’t do. Everybody had their own threshhold, especially when it came to desperation-gayness, and that was John’s. 

But apparently not. “Really?” Rodney managed to ask finally.  On their own, his hands had gone up John’s shirt and were stroking his ribs.

“Yeah,” Sheppard said. 

“Have you— before?” Rodney asked.

Sheppard squinted oddly, jaw tight again, then said, “Yeah, but— I _really_ didn’t like it.”

“Then why do you want to do it now?” Rodney asked, puzzled. 

“Because,” Sheppard said, uncomfortable again, “it’d be good. With you.”

“Really?” That went right through Rodney, though he couldn’t have named the emotion. “You think I’d—“

“You’re a genius,” Sheppard said with a not-quite-shrug. “You’d figure it out. So you wanna?”

“Yes,” Rodney said, brain almost shorting out again. “Jesus. Yes!” His hands started moving again, and he nuzzled at Sheppard’s good shoulder. 

“You’re gonna have to do all the work,” Sheppard said, “because I’m high as fuck but moving too much still hurts, but you’re probably also gonna reap all of the benefits so it’ll totally be worth it.”

Rodney’s brain was pretty well short-circuited by the whole putting-his-dick-into-John-Sheppard scenario, but he was a genius, so there was a little brainpower left over to let the little creeping worry in. (There was _always_ enough brainpower to worry about _something_.) “You don’t think you’ll enjoy it?” he asked, pulling back a little to look at Sheppard’s face. 

Sheppard gave him a lazy grin. “I think this is the only way I will,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll overthink it and it’ll suck. C’mon.”

“Then I won’t overthink it,” Rodney said, and kissed Sheppard’s mouth while he worked the sling strap buckle open. 

He undressed himself first, kind of hastily, and then set to work taking Sheppard’s clothes off, slowly and gently so as not to jar anything. Taking the t-shirt off was ridiculous and required both of them coordinating their efforts somewhat better than Sheppard was capable of at the moment, but there was only one yelp out of Sheppard (and it being Sheppard, the yelp was more of a stoic manly grunt) and then Sheppard lay back a moment, gathering himself. Rodney leaned over him and slowly, slowly teased his way into his mouth until the tension went out of him and he was pliable under Rodney again. 

By the time he had Sheppard’s socks, track pants, and underpants off he was almost hard again. Rodney was hard as a rock and starting to ache, but he knew he could be patient. He got the lube out but instead of going right to it, he nuzzled his way down and sucked Sheppard’s dick for a while, coaxing it into full hardness. 

“Don’t waste your time,” Sheppard said, but Rodney gave him a look. 

“I _like_ this,” he said. “Don’t make me stop.”

“Okay,” Sheppard said, a little dreamily. He’d just taken another pill during their meal, and Rodney thought it must be kicking in now. While it was too bad in terms of having him sharp and aware, it was good because if Rodney jostled him it wouldn’t hurt. Was this unethical, Rodney worried, swallowing Sheppard’s cock down; was Sheppard too drugged to give proper consent? Because he hadn’t seemed it, but, well— his hips hitched a little and he moaned as Rodney got him all the way into his throat. He sure _seemed_ aware. 

“You’re really not roofied?” Rodney asked, as he came up for air, hand moving on Sheppard’s spit-slick cock. Sheppard was moving his hips a little, obviously turned on. 

Sheppard laughed breathlessly. “No,” he said. “Wow, I can feel more than I thought I’d be able to.” 

Rodney sucked him in again, all the way down, then pulled up slowly and tongued at the head, hand working the shaft, watching Sheppard’s eyelashes flutter down. “Good,” he said finally, and held Sheppard’s cockhead in his mouth while he lubed up his fingers. 

He’d had a couple of fingers in Sheppard’s ass before, but only pretty near the end of a blowjob when he pretty much could’ve done anything and Sheppard would’ve liked it. He went slow, now, teasing, gentle, and Sheppard gasped a couple times and rolled his head a little on the pillow, bent his knees up to give Rodney a better angle, and as he got a second finger in, actually moaned a little. “Yeah,” he said, “do it.”

Rodney grinned at him, slowly pushing both fingers all the way in, bobbing his head slowly to take Sheppard’s cock down his throat at the same pace. Sheppard made an odd little mewling noise and shivered, and Rodney knew he was onto something here. He worked him a little while longer, until Sheppard was breathing hard and shivering a little. Then he pulled off his cock and said, “Get a condom.”

Sheppard flopped a hand toward the drawer, rolled his eyes a little, leaned and managed to snag one out of the open drawer. He opened it and held it out to Rodney. 

Rodney pulled his fingers out slowly and sat up to roll the condom on. Sheppard watched him, face unreadable, but even through the hazy sparkle the drugs gave him, Rodney could see a little tension collecting in his neck, his shoulders, his thighs. He was pretty nervous about this, and Rodney had a spare thought for grim death for whoever’d made Sheppard so afraid of this. The guy had an insane pain tolerance and very little consideration for himself, so whatever it was must’ve been pretty goddamn bad. So Rodney moved up, pulling Sheppard’s thighs up into his lap, but lubed up both hands again and put his fingers carefully back in, the other hand back on Sheppard’s cock. 

Sheppard clenched a little, nervous, and it was almost as hard for Rodney to get his fingers back in as it had been to get them in the first time. Okay then. Needed a lot more prep. “I guess you really _really_ didn’t like this last time you tried it,” Rodney said. 

“It was a bad time,” Sheppard said a little absently, head falling back as Rodney’s slick hand twisted up his shaft, fondled his balls, worked at him in all the ways he knew he liked. Once he relaxed a little Rodney started moving the fingers inside him again, and Sheppard made that little noise again and hitched his hips. “Oh wow,” he said. “Okay.” 

“Yeah,” Rodney said, watching the pulse move under the skin of Sheppard’s throat. “God, you’re so hot.”

“It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Sheppard said dryly. “It makes people want things from you.”

“Yeah but _look_ ,” Rodney said helplessly. “Look at you. I can’t understand how anyone would ever want to _hurt_ you.”

Sheppard smiled then, a small smile that was maybe a little sad but definitely fond, and Rodney figured he’d take what he could get. He twisted his fingers, and Sheppard’s head tipped back a little, mouth opening. “Wow,” he said again. “Yeah.”

“Good,” Rodney said. 

“I’m not gonna— oh wow— be able to get off,” Sheppard said breathlessly. “No matter how much I like this. It’s not— I’m good.”

“Maybe,” Rodney said. “But I’m not in a hurry. If you don’t like it you won’t let me do it again, and I think I’m really going to like it, so I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure you get as much out of it as possible.”

Sheppard laughed. “Always thinkin’,” he said, and shivered a little. He’d gone lax again, comfortable and trusting, and he was so beautiful it hurt something in Rodney’s chest. Because he could still see, overlaid over the present, all the pain of those three helpless days, hunching and twisting this gorgeous body, thinning that lush mouth, dimming those sparkling eyes. And even now, he was too still around the neck and shoulders, still shackled by fear of pain. The scar from his surgery was in the back, still held together with a few stitches, and Rodney was glad he couldn’t see it from this angle. 

Rodney had three fingers in now, easily, and Sheppard was drifting, eyes half-closed, hips hitching, as turned on as he was going to get. The key was to ease into this so he didn’t have time to remember why he was nervous. Rodney understood now why Sheppard thought it was a good idea to try this while drugged out of his mind. 

He leaned down and kissed Sheppard to distract him, and Sheppard opened his mouth easily, happy and trusting and turned-on. “Let me take care of you,” he murmured, watching Sheppard’s eyes drift closed, feeling the way he shivered as Rodney twisted his fingers, as his other hand moved over his cock.

Rodney slowly, slowly pulled his fingers out, pushing them back in shallower, shallower, taking his cock in that hand and holding it near John’s entrance. Finally, as he pulled his fingers all the way out, he pushed the head of his cock in slowly to replace them, licking his way back into Sheppard’s mouth as he did, and squeezing more firmly at Sheppard’s cock. 

“Ah,” John said into his mouth, but didn’t tense up, didn’t push back, so Rodney slowly, slowly eased in, keeping his hand moving, keeping his tongue moving. Sheppard shivered a little but Rodney was already in far enough that when he tightened, he tightened around him and didn’t push him out. Still, Rodney stopped where he was, and used both hands on Sheppard’s cock, his balls, rubbing and squeezing and stroking in all the ways he’d learned the guy liked. 

After a few moments— longer than it should’ve taken, but not too long for Rodney to wait— Sheppard relaxed again, and his good hand came up and ran along Rodney’s cheek, down his neck, grabbed his shoulder. “Yeah,” Sheppard whispered, and Rodney started to move again, pressing in. It was good, it was tight and hot and slick, and Rodney kept inching in, slowly, endlessly. Sheppard shivered, but didn’t tense up, and Rodney felt his mouth curl. He pulled back, and Sheppard was smiling sort of dopily. 

“That doesn’t even hurt at all,” he said wonderingly.

Rodney gritted his teeth for a second, holding completely still. “It’s not _supposed_ to hurt,” he said. 

Sheppard wriggled experimentally, and Rodney had to let go of his balls and put his hand down on the bed to hold himself still. “No, it feels really good,” he said. “It’s— _oh_.” He tipped his head back as Rodney moved carefully into him, starting a slow, smooth rhythm. “Oh wow.”

“The reason people do this is not because it sucks,” Rodney said, a little breathlessly, because moving inside Sheppard felt amazing, the tight heat of him, the feel of his taut hairy thighs moving over Rodney’s, the way his breath hitched, his fingers flexing on Rodney’s shoulder. 

“I knew that,” Sheppard said vaguely, and undulated, changing the angle of his hips, shoving himself up against Rodney. “Oh— oh Jesus,” he said, eyes going wide and staring past Rodney. _Right there_ , Rodney thought, and drove in, holding the angle, harder, right there, and Sheppard gasped and shivered and did incredibly exciting things with his interior muscles. “Oh holy shit. Oh Jesus, Rodney, oh God.” It was as much noise as he’d ever heard Sheppard make, and it drove him on, moving smooth and firm and careful but deliberate, right there, yes, and he jacked Sheppard’s dick the same way, smooth and firm and purposeful. 

Sheppard kept making these incredible little noises, little cries on every exhale, an exhale on every thrust, and Rodney was starting to have to grit his teeth and think about other things so that it didn’t all end right now. He didn’t know how long he could keep this up, and maybe Sheppard had been right and he wasn’t going to be able to come, but he sure as fuck sounded like he wanted to. His breathing was getting a little more ragged, a little faster, his voice a little deeper and more intense, and he really didn’t look or sound like a guy who was going to lose concentration and drift out of arousal. 

He didn’t feel like it either. He was tighter, trembling a little, and God it was hot, God it was perfect, so good, and it took every ounce of coordination Rodney had to keep his hand moving over Sheppard’s cock, which was really hard now and that wasn’t just lube, he was wet too, he was really getting into this. Rodney’s thighs were burning, his ass was burning, his arm hurt and was starting to tremble with the effort of holding him up, his other forearm was burning with the effort of keeping up those strokes. 

Sheppard sucked in a deeper breath and held it a second, then let it out in almost a sob— “Ah, God!” and came, shuddering hard, fingers scrabbling for purchase around the back of Rodney’s neck for a moment before he let go, shivered hard again, and slowly went limp. Rodney let himself down, slowing his strokes, finally letting go of Sheppard’s cock and putting his other arm down to support himself so he could work the kink out of that other wrist. He wasn’t far off yet, but he had to make sure Sheppard wasn’t too sensitive to continue. And that meant letting the man recover enough to talk. 

So he kissed him, slow and sweet, keeping up just a little bit of a rocking motion with his hips. “See,” he murmured, “that was okay.” 

“Jesus Christ,” Sheppard said, dazed and breathless. “Jesus fucking Christ, Rodney.” 

“I told you it’s not supposed to hurt,” Rodney said, nuzzling a little at Sheppard’s jaw. 

“You,” Sheppard said, flopping a hand at him, chest still heaving. “C’mon.”

“Yeah?” But Rodney didn’t need to be told twice. He shoved down harder and lost himself in a half-dozen strokes or so, spiraling into a flare of pleasure made slightly brighter, more intense than usual by the fact that he was _inside John_ fucking _Sheppard_.

He came back to himself in a minute, still panting. Sheppard shoved at his shoulder. “You’re heavy and you’re on my bad side,” he said a little tightly, and Rodney jerked up guiltily— he had indeed rested his forehead on the pillow directly above Sheppard’s broken shoulder, and was undoubtedly putting some pressure on it.

“Sorry, sorry,” he said, and sat up, working himself slowly out of Sheppard with the condom. He’d tightened up a bit, astonishingly tight for a guy who’d just been fucked that long— a testament to his tight-assedness, Rodney thought and dismissed as not even funny. More a testament to his overall muscle tone, probably. Or possibly a worrying sign that he was freaking out. He got all the way out and dumped the condom (impressively but unsurprisingly full) in the little trash basket to give himself time to come up with something reassuring to say. 

“You’re not freaking out, are you?” he asked, graceless as usual, because if there was one thing ever that Rodney McKay’s formidable genius couldn’t do, it was come up with graceful ways to handle difficult social situations. Like fucking a guy in the ass who’d had to roofie himself to even contemplate doing it. Shit, that probably had been unethical, even if Sheppard had enjoyed it and it had been his idea anyway. And now he’d probably screwed everything up. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Sheppard said lazily, and waved his good hand limply. “Get over here, you nut.” 

Well, Rodney supposed, that worked. He very carefully lay down beside John, pulling up the sheet because what the hell, they’d need changing anyway. He dared a kiss, and Sheppard let him, turning his head a little to accept it. He was still breathing hard. So was Rodney. 

“It’s okay if you’re freaking out,” Rodney murmured. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

Sheppard laughed a little. “Good,” he said. His breathing slowed, and Rodney realized suddenly that he’d fallen asleep, just like that. 

 

 

“Aaaaaaowww.” John peeled his eyes open as a sharp throb of pain woke him. His goddamned fucking shoulder. He was really really tired of how bad it hurt. And the real damage was under so many layers of muscle that icing it barely helped. 

He gathered himself to sit up. His body felt odd. He was kind of… not sore, but he felt… oh yeah. 

Rodney’d fucked him.

And he’d totally fucking loved it. 

John lay motionless a moment, contemplating the ceiling. He really ought to have a good freakout over that. That was pretty much the gayest thing it was possible to do. If nothing else it should give him awful flashbacks, maybe terrible nightmares, to the things that had been done to him so long ago. 

But mostly he just felt really relaxed. Orgasm on painkillers was weird; it had felt like he was coming for like five minutes. He sighed, yawned, and stretched, aborting the move halfway through when it made his shoulder twinge something fierce. “Ow. Fucking _ow_.”

“Ok, you are awake,” Rodney said, startling John. He was over at the desk, the desklamp the only light on in the room, wearing sweats and a disreputable-looking zip-front hoodie, leaned back in the chair with a laptop balanced across his thighs. “I wasn’t sure if you were grumbling in your sleep.”

“Meds wore off,” John said a little tightly. “Hurts.” Hurt worse from his attempting to shove himself up when Rodney startled him.

Rodney set the laptop on the desk and found the bottle of pills. He poured John a glass of water from the pitcher and brought it over with the bottle, turning the bottle to read the label. “One to two,” he said. 

“One,” John said, holding his hand out, and Rodney fished a pill out for him. He swallowed it down, drank the rest of the glass of water, handed it back. “Thanks.”

“You’re ok otherwise?” Rodney asked, a little too solicitously. _Christ, I’m not your girlfriend_ , Joh thought grumpily, but he knew not to say it. 

“As long as I don’t get gay-pregnant,” he said instead, smirking at Rodney and lying back down. He was still naked, and his asshole was still greasy, and Jesus Christ he’d just come with a guy’s dick in his ass, but the freakout couldn’t quite get off the ground. He wriggled experimentally. Yeah, it felt really weird. Yeah, he probably better go to the bathroom. He pushed the sheet back and gingerly sat up again. Oh, hey, Rodney must’ve cleaned up some of the mess, since he wasn’t stuck to the sheets. 

Rodney hovered solicitously as he got up, until he shot him a narrow-eyed look. “I can pee unassisted,” John said, tone neutral but deliberate emphasis on each word. 

“Of course,” Rodney said, backing off a little bit. John grabbed his track pants and pulled them on carefully, one-handed, then went out to the bathroom. 

He came back and Rodney was engrossed in the laptop again. John checked the time, then checked it again, and sat down on the bed. “Whoa,” he said. It was after 2400. With a twenty-eight hour day, the meals were spaced a little more widely, but that still meant that he’d been asleep a couple of hours, beyond however long they’d spent fucking. 

Rodney looked up, concerned. “Jesus,” John said, “I didn’t hover over you like this after we fucked the first time. It’s just a dick in an ass, it’s not like you might have broken me.”

Rodney pulled back a little behind the laptop, in a flicker of cowed-ness that made John feel a little squeamish, then answered snappishly “Yes but I also didn’t freak out the first time it was suggested, and wasn’t surprised when it didn’t hurt. It’s pretty obvious you had reasons you weren’t eager to try it again until you _roofied yourself_ to the point that you could ask for it. Forgive me for being a little concerned!”

John let his breath out slowly. “Okay,” he said, “point.” He rubbed his hand briskly along his bicep, deciding whether to get dressed or go shower. He’d have to be careful of the stitches, though. Man, what a pain in the ass. 

At least the pain was fading as the pill dissolved. 

“I’ve probably built whatever it was up into an even worse scenario in my imagination,” Rodney groused, still watching him over the top of the laptop. “And I managed to convince myself while you were asleep that you’d wake up and be really angry with me for taking advantage of you while you were drugged.”

“Jeez,” John said, “no, not that. I’m not completely drugged out of my mind, I just knew I’d be relaxed enough not to freak out.” 

“See, that,” Rodney said. “Not really all that reassuring.”

John rubbed his face, found his sling, and awkwardly tried to put it on. Rodney put the computer over and came to help, then stopped at the last second, looking uncertainly at him. “I would appreciate a hand,” John said a little stiffly, and Rodney sat beside him on the bed to thread the straps back through the buckles. 

“You have goosebumps,” Rodney said, tracing a finger along John’s side. John twitched ticklishly. 

“I’m cold,” he admitted, “but all my shirts are pullovers. I’ll just get back in bed.”

Rodney stood up and pulled off the hoodie, then draped it around John’s shoulders. “You can borrow that until you’re done with the sling,” he said. 

It was soft. It was warm. It was cozy. John put his arm through the sleeve. He couldn’t be seen in public in this thing. “Thanks,” he said, snuggling into it. He put his hand on Rodney’s thigh. “C’mere,” he said. 

Rodney sat down next to him, not quite touching, like they were teenagers on the couch and Dad was in the chair across the room. John sighed. If the drugs weren’t dissolving and leaving him pleasantly light-headed, he wouldn’t be able to open his mouth at all. As it was he didn’t know where to start. He bit his lip instead, and looked at Rodney looking at him. 

“I never thought I was gay,” John said. “Or bi. I mean, I was never interested. Before.” _Draw the conclusion, Rodney,_ he thought. _Don’t make me say it._

“Okay,” Rodney said, blank.

“So any other time somebody’s put their dick in my ass,” John said, and paused. _C’mon. C’mon. Draw the fucking conclusion._  

Rodney just looked confused.

John sighed, steeling himself. “I never wanted it, before,” he said. “It was never…” 

Rodney had gone back to just looking blank. John waited. C’mon, he was a genius. “You weren’t gay and didn’t want to have gay sex but did anyway?” Rodney shook his head a little as he said it, looking irritated.

John nodded slowly. “I wouldn’t say _did anyway_ ,” he said. “That’s not really how it went down.”

“Were you just being polite or something?” Rodney asked. 

“Jesus,” John said, and shoved himself up off the bed and went out to the balcony. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t talk about it. 

He stayed out there a little while, watching the lights reflect on the water. The various piers of Atlantis were mostly dark, only the occupied areas lit up, but there were a few lights on, emergency lights showing the vague outline of the city so any vessels in the air or water would see it. It was beautiful, and it was as much home as anyplace he’d ever lived. Probably more. 

After a while the door hissed open behind him. Rodney didn’t say anything, just came over and leaned on the railing next to him. John couldn’t help but smile a little at the way Rodney nervously bobbed his head to check out the hundred-foot fall first, then tentatively settled his weight on the railing. “So, um,” Rodney said finally, breaking first. John had known he would. 

“Don’t make me say it,” John said. “You know what I’m like. I don’t think I _can_.”

Rodney caught his breath a little, then half-laughed, and after a long moment said “How many times?”

“Twice,” John answered, looking away. “One was before I joined up. The other one’s in my file.”

“No it’s not,” Rodney said, and John turned to stare at him.

“You’ve read my file?”

Rodney backed away, eyes wide. “Um,” he said, “um, only a little! I was— it was by accident!”

“You’re a lousy liar,” John said, but turned to rest his back against the railing instead. 

Rodney’s shoulders slumped a little and he let out a breath. “Fine,” he said. “I was snooping. Elizabeth let a tantalizing hint slip and I just had to chase it down.” He shook his head. “It said you’d been captured and tortured with electric stuff. There was nothing in there about…” He couldn’t say it either. Good, John wasn’t sure he could stand to hear it said. 

“That was the second time I got captured and tortured,” John said. “The first time was years ago. And they… well, they didn’t have a car battery going spare, I guess, so they were more inventive.” 

“With,” Rodney started, then bit it off. 

“Various objects,” John said. “One dick. Short hospital stay, long psych eval. I think the psych eval was more torture than the torture was.”

Rodney stared at him, and John wriggled a little uncomfortably under his gaze, but it was better than Rodney not being able to look at him at all, which was what had happened with some of his then-colleagues who’d known about it. “It wasn’t in your file,” Rodney said finally, quietly.

“It was a long time ago,” John said. “A lot longer than the time with the car battery. That was only a couple years.” He shrugged his good shoulder. “Maybe the file they brought to Atlantis is only the last ten years or something. I dunno. Was the stay in Walter Reed after the helicopter crash in there?”

“No,” Rodney said, puzzled. 

“Then that’s it, it’s only recent shit,” John said. “Guess they figured if I was gonna flip out about it I already would’ve.” He sighed, letting some tension out with it. “Good. I usually can tell when a new CO has read that bit, because they look at me differently.” 

“They shouldn’t,” Rodney said, quiet and horrified. 

John shrugged. “I don’t worry about _should_ ,” he said. “I just worry about _does_. And _does_ bears out my approach of never fucking telling anyone about anything.”

“Except me,” Rodney said quietly, after a moment. 

John let out a slow breath, considering. “Except you,” he said. 

“Then,” Rodney said, coming and leaning right next to him, very close, “what about the other time?”

John swallowed hard. “OK _nobody_ knows about that one,” he said. He breathed a moment, wincing when his shoulder started to ache again, and he realized it was because he’d tensed up and was curling his shoulders. Rodney slid over a tiny bit, rested his shoulder against John’s good one, and John made himself ease up, let his breath out, lean against Rodney a little, feel where his shoulder was warm through their clothes. He chewed on his lips a moment, gathering himself. “Remember how I told you I got gay-bashed?” he managed finally, hoarsely. Rodney nodded; John saw it from the corner of his eye but couldn’t look over. “Well. The guy’s problem was kind of… he beat the shit out of me and… it’s like he was mad at me that he wanted to do this, I don’t know. I got the broken nose set at the health center but I didn’t tell them about the rest of what he did to me. And even that, I never said who did it. Just said it was horsin’ around.”

“Jesus, John,” Rodney said quietly. 

“Yeah I don’t really need to hear about it,” John said tightly. “It was my first week of college. I thought I’d get kicked out of ROTC. And ROTC was the only way I was gonna be able to afford the degree I wanted. So I kept my damn mouth shut.” He swallowed hard. “That was before Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. That was back when you could get kicked out just on suspicion.”

“I’m not blaming you,” Rodney said, still quiet. “There’s a lot of shit bullies did to me I never told anybody about. Including a guy in college who decided to teach me a lesson by cornering me in the library and shoving his fingers up my ass. But that’s as far as it went.” Rodney pushed harder into John’s shoulder, held the contact. “I never told anybody either. And I don’t know if I’d’ve told anybody if it went farther than that. Not if I could hide the damage.”

John stayed pressed against Rodney’s shoulder for a little bit. Thank God the guy wasn’t a hugger. He couldn’t have handled a hug right now. But this was perfect, solid and warm and comforting and okay but he could pull away if he needed to. “You were pretty young in college,” John said. 

“Finished my bachelor’s at fifteen,” Rodney said. “I was a little shit, I won’t deny it.”

“Yeah but still,” John said. “You were a _kid_.”

“So were you,” Rodney said.

“I was seventeen,” John said. “That’s a big difference.”

“Maybe,” Rodney said. He shivered, and John looked over, remembering he was wearing the guy’s sweatshirt. 

“Let’s go inside,” John said a little gruffly. Rodney followed him in, and he pulled him down onto the bed and kissed him. He let Rodney hug him, then, let him peel him back out of the sweatshirt, rolled around a little with him, but it didn’t escalate. They both just lay there, wrapped up together, quiet. 

“This is gayer than the ass-fucking,” John finally said, and snickered as Rodney smacked him (gently) with the pillow. 

“Jerk,” Rodney said. 

John laughed, rolled onto his back, and lay quietly for a moment, Rodney a warm weight against his side. Finally he said, “You find out anything good while you were snooping?”

“Not really,” Rodney said, sounding glum. “I couldn’t get in there easily. And there’s nothing juicy in my file. I figured there’d be all kinds of complaints and things. But really, not so much.”

“Aw,” John said, “people like you, and not just for your ass.”

“I _do_ have a fabulous ass,” Rodney pointed out meditatively. 

“Yes,” John said fondly, “you do.”

“Oh,” Rodney said. “Elizabeth’s birthday is the day after tomorrow. I did find that out.”

“Shit,” John said. “We better get her something.”

“I’m not getting her anything,” Rodney said crossly. “I never buy people presents.”

“Fine,” John said. “ _I_ better get her something.” He thought about it. “Hey, fly me to the mainland tomorrow.”

“Why should I do that?” Rodney asked. “I have work to do.”

“I can’t fly like this,” John said. “Anyway we can do work on the flight. We gotta figure out where to explore next.”


End file.
